Amazon rapidly reports good results for Q4

Short and mostly sweet: Amazon execs blasted through their earnings call on Thursday in just under 45 minutes. But the results themselves were worth lingering over: a best-ever holiday season, kindling joy in analysts' hearts.

Wall Street expected good things from the Seattle e-commerce firm, to the tune of returns of 39 cents per share. The company came back with 52 cents/share, on a profit of $225 million. Net sales revenue during the crucial holiday season was up 18% year-over-year to $6.7 billion; $3.64 billion of that was Amazon's traditional "square-box" fare of books, DVDs, and CDs, which were up 9%. The jump in less traditional Amazon products such as clothing and electronics was even more impressive, up 31% to $2.89 billion.

If there was any shade thrown on Amazon's sunny report, it would be by currency exchange rates, which all but wiped out what would have been a 10% year-over-year operating-income gain. As it was, operating income for Q4 '08 was $272 million, up from $271 in Q4 '07. Net sales revenue, in turn, would have grown 24%.

Geographically, every segment on the planet advanced year-over-year. North American sales were up 18% to $3.63 billion. International sales were $3.07 billion -- up 19%, though without the currency pressure that would have been 31%.

The company also released full-year numbers for 2008. Net sales increased 29% to $19.17 billion, compared with $14.84 billion in 2007. Operating income increased 28% to $842 million, compared with $655 million in 2007. Net income increased 36% to $645 million in 2008, or $1.49 per diluted share, up 37 cents/share from 2007.

There was Q1 guidance, and it was also cheerful stuff. The company expects net sales to grow between 9% and 19% year-over-year, to between $4.525 billion and $4.925 billion. Operating income, on the other hand, could show either a pronounced decline or a modest increase: somewhere between $125 million and $210 million, or between 37% decline and 6% growth year-over-year.

Naturally analysts were curious about the Kindle, a new version of which is believed to be imminent; naturally Amazon wasn't saying. But they did reveal two impressive stats. First, the Kindle e-bookstore added 45,000 new titles last quarter, for a total of 230,000, plus four major daily newspapers (Arizona Republic, Orange County Register, Baltimore Sun, USA Today).

Second, the company has compiled a bit of data on how Kindle owners buy books. The answer: Frantically. Amazon estimates that Kindle owners buy 1.76 new Kindle e-books for every paper-printed book they buy...and they buy no fewer printed books than they did before.

Shares of Amazon closed slightly down at the end of the trading day, but that was before the call. After the call, prices rocketed up 13.34% to $56.67 at press time.