Amazon's fourth quarter income spirals four-fold to $487 million

E-commerce major Amazon International reported a significant decline in its fourth quarter ending December 31 operating income at $487 million.

The company had reported operating income loss of $108 in the same period last year.

Net sales of the company increased 22% to $43.7 billion; however, net sales for its international business went up only 18% to 13.96 billion.

“Excluding the $558 million unfavorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter, net sales increased 24% compared with fourth quarter 2015,” Amazon said.

In the third quarter of 2016, Amazon's international unit had reported a $541 million loss primarily due to spends in India.

The company said that the net sales of the full year of 2016 increased 27% to $136.0 billion, compared with $107.0 billion in 2015, excluding the $550 million ‘unfavourable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates.’

“Our Prime team’s customer obsession kept them busy in 2016,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO. “Prime members can now choose from over 50 million items with free two-day shipping — up 73% since 2015. Prime Video is now available in more than 200 countries and territories. Prime Now added 18 new cities, which means millions more members now get one and two hour delivery. New benefits were also added to the list, like Prime Reading, Audible Channels for Prime, Twitch Prime and more. And customers noticed — tens of millions of new paid members joined the program in just this past year,” he added.