Shares of Amazon.com Inc. AMZN, +5.60% surged 2.5% in after-hours trade Thursday, after the e-commerce giant reported a big jump in fourth-quarter profit and revenue that rose above expectations. Net income rose to $1.86 billion, or $3.75 a share, from $749 million, or $1.54 a share, in the same period a year ago. The results included a one-time benefit of $789 million from tax-reform legislation. The FactSet consensus for earnings per share was $1.88. Revenue rose to $60.45 billion from $43.74 billion, beating the FactSet consensus of $59.75 billion. Sales for Amazon's AWS cloud business rose to $5.11 billion from $3.54 billion, topping the FactSet consensus of $4.97 billion.
Looking ahead, Amazon expects first-quarter revenue of $47.75 billion to $50.75 billion, surrounding the FactSet consensus of $48.60 billion. Although Amazon didn't provide details of Alexa sales, Chief Executive Jeff Bezos said 2017 projections were "very optimistic, and we far exceeded them. We don't see positive surprises of this magnitude very often - expect us to double down."