Amazon Shares Rise On Strong Xmas Sales

Shares (Berlin: DI6.BE - news) in the online retailer Amazon rose by more than 8% in aftermarket trading after the company's quarterly profit results beat expectations.

Investors pushed the e-commerce giant's shares to $338.60 (£224.93), a rise of $26.92 (£17.89).

Amazon posted profits of $214m (£142m) in the three months until 31 December, exceeding Wall Street forecasts, but down on the same period in 2013.

The online retailer posted revenue of $26.33bn (£19.5bn) over the three-month period, missing expectations.

Amazon Prime membership rose 53% during 2014, despite price rises put in place by the Seattle-based company.

Amazon has long focussed its spending on expanding into new areas such as cloud computing and video streaming, a strategy which has affected profitability.

Google (Xetra: A0B7FY - news) posted fourth-quarter earnings figures of $4.8bn, or $6.91 ($4.59) per share, a 41% increase on the same period in 2013.

Analysts had forecast earnings of $7.12 (£4.72) per share, according to FactSet.

The company's revenue for the three-month period rose 15% to $18.1bn.