Seattle — After spending six years and billions of dollars building itself into the world's largest Internet retailer, Amazon.com finally has made a profit.
The company said Tuesday it earned $5 million in its fourth quarter, its first quarterly profit since it started as an online bookseller in 1995. Just a year ago, Amazon had a fourth-quarter loss of $545 million.
"I've always known that our business model worked," said Jeff Bezos, the company founder who was named Time's Person of the Year amid the dot-com boom of 1999. "We are incredibly happy with these fourth-quarter results, (but) we've really got a lot of work to do going forward."
Despite a lackluster holiday sales season for many retailers, Seattle-based Amazon had net sales of $1.12 billion for the quarter ending Dec. 31, a 15 percent increase over its fourth quarter a year earlier.
Amazon's chief financial officer, Warren Jenson, said the company was helped by lower book prices during the holidays and a yearlong company focus on cutting expenses.
"We just did it simpler and better," he said.
The company beat its own estimates for the fourth quarter as well as those of analysts, who had predicted another loss of millions of dollars.
Despite the strong results, Amazon said it still expected operating results ranging from a break even to a loss of $16 million in the current quarter, which ends March 31.
Amazon stock climbed $2.44 to close at $12.60 Tuesday on the Nasdaq stock market.
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