4:53PM EDT October 25. 2012 -
NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon's stock fell Thursday after the world's largest online retailer reported third-quarter results below Wall Street's expectations, including a large loss related to its stake in online deals service LivingSocial.
Amazon.com (AMZN) posted a loss of $274 million, or 60 cents per share, in the July-September period. That's down from earnings of $63 million, or 14 cents per share, a year earlier.
The latest quarter's results include a loss of 37 cents per share related to Amazon's stake in LivingSocial. Without the charge, it still would have lost 23 cents per share, worse than analysts expected.
Revenue grew 27% to $13.81 billion, from $10.88 billion, also falling short of analysts' expectations.
Analysts surveyed by FactSet, on average, were expecting a loss of 7 cents a share on revenue of $13.91 billion.
Amazon said its $199 Kindle Fire HD tablet is its best-selling product worldwide, but as usual, it did not give sales figures.
"Our approach is to work hard to charge less. Sell devices near breakeven and you can pack a lot of sophisticated hardware into a very low price point," founder and CEO Jeff Bezos said.
Amazon has a larger version of the Kindle Fire HD out next month.
Amazon's results come two days after Apple introduced a smaller iPad, the Mini, for $329. In its press release announcing the results, Amazon included a list trumpeting its high-definition Kindle Fire as cheaper than the iPad Mini and with more features. However, Apple's iPad has a much wider selection of third-party apps.
At one point, Amazon's stock was off $6.42, or 2.9%, to $216.50 in after-hours trading before recovering some of that loss. The stock had closed down $5.57, or 2.4%, at $222.92 in the regular trading session.
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