Amazon to sell more stuff in 2008

Just like 2007

This afternoon, during a conference call with industry analysts and reporters, Amazon chief financial officer Thomas Szkutak gave the world a peek into the company's plans for the coming year. "In 2008, you know, we're going to do more of what we did in 2007," he said.

That's right, Amazon plans to sell more stuff. "We're going to make sure we have great prices across all our categories and geographies - as was reflected in our Q4 results." Q4 results were pretty good.

In the quarter ending December 31, 2007, Szkutak announced, Amazon's net sales hit $5.67bn, a 42 per cent increase from the fourth quarter of 2006. Even if you leave out the $0.20bn boost that came courtesy of fortuitous foreign exchange rates, sales increased a full 37 per cent. This translates to a 112 per cent profit increase, from $98m in Q4 2006 to $207m in Q4 2007.

In 2007 as a whole, net sales increased 39 per cent to $14.84bn, and net income leaped 150 per cent to $476m. This was the company's fastest annual growth rate since 2000. And in 2008, the company expects net sales of between $18.75bn and $19.75bn. That would an increase of between 26 and 33 per cent. Szkutak plans to sell lots more stuff. But you knew that. ®