Amazon.com announced financial results for the full-year 2008 and for its fourth quarter ended December 31, 2008. Net sales for 2008 increased 29% to $19.17 billion, or 28% excluding the $127 million favorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the year, compared with $14.84 billion in 2007. Net income increased 36% to $645 million in 2008.
Despite reports from ComScore that online retail sales were down 3% overall during the holiday shopping season, Amazon managed to grow fourth quarter 2008 net sales by 18% year over year to $6.70 billion. Excluding the $320 million unfavorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter, net sales would have grown 24% compared with fourth quarter 2007. Net income increased 9% year over year to $225 million in the fourth quarter.
North America segment sales (U.S. and Canadian sites) were $3.63 billion, up 18% from fourth quarter 2007. International segment sales (U.K., German, Japanese, French and Chinese sites) were $3.07 billion, up 19% from fourth quarter 2007. Excluding the unfavorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter, International sales grew 31%.
Worldwide Media sales grew 9% to $3.64 billion, compared with $3.33 billion in fourth quarter 2007. Worldwide Electronics & Other General Merchandise sales grew 31% to $2.89 billion, compared with $2.21 billion in fourth quarter 2007, and increased to 43% of worldwide net sales compared with 39%.
Of special interest to online merchants, Amazon.com said it shipped over 3 million units worldwide in fourth quarter 2008 on behalf of sellers who utilized Fulfillment by Amazon. Worldwide active seller accounts were more than 1.5 million, up 18%. Seller units were 27% of total units versus 26%. Active customer accounts exceeded 88 million, up 16%.
CEO Jeff Bezos and Chief Financial Officer Tom Szkutak took questions from analysts in a conference call Thursday afternoon. (For the transcript, see SeekingAlpha.com.) In response to an analyst question, Szkutak said, "In terms of the active sellers, as we've talked about in the past, we have three customer sets, are the consumers, sellers, and developers. And we start with those customers in each of the things that we do and work backwards. And we’ve focused very heavily on the seller experience over the last several years, and that's what’s we believe is driving the active seller account growth."
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