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Amazon‘s (NASDAQ: AMZN) stock market rally came to an abrupt halt last week following the Feb. 2 release of the company’s fourth-quarter 2022 results. The tech giant’s earnings fell way behind analysts’ expectations, and its cloud business grew at a slower-than-expected pace, which led the company to deliver a muted forecast for the current quarter.
As a result, investors were quick to press the panic button. However, shares of the company are up 19% year-to-date even after that post-earnings slide, thanks mainly to the impressive momentum Amazon gained in January amid the broader market rally. Should investors capitalize on this drop and buy Amazon stock in anticipation of more upside? Or will the e-commerce and cloud computing giant continue to slide? Let’s find out.
Amazon’s fourth-quarter 2022 net sales increased 9% year over year to $149.2 billion, exceeding the $145.4 billion consensus estimate and surpassing management’s own high-end guidance of $148 billion. However, the company’s net income dropped to just $0.03 per diluted share from $1.39 per diluted share in the prior-year period on account of shrinking margins in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) segment, as well as severance costs attributed to the massive layoffs that the company announced in recent months.