No New Kindle Until 2009: Amazon; Company Lowers Guidance

The Kindle has been great for Amazon.com, as they noted in Wednesday's earnings call, but at least for 2009, Amazon.com doesn't see a need for a refresh. The Kindle was first introduced in November of last year.

CFO Tom Szkutak said (emphasis mine):

Kindle selection continues to grow. Since inception, we have more than doubled the number of books, magazines, newspapers, and blogs available to be delivered wirelessly in less than one minute. Kindle titles already account for more than 10% of unit sales for books that are available in both digital and print formats. We’ve ramped up manufacturing capacity over the past 10 months and Kindles are in stock and available for immediate shipment. Kindle sales since launch have significantly exceeded our expectations. We will not introduce the new version of the Kindle until next year at the earliest.

Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos added:

So far what we have seen with the Kindle book units is that they are additive to physical book units. So when somebody buys a Kindle and the period after, you know sort of the post purchase period post buying a Kindle, they buy 1.6 times as many Kindle books as they bought physical books prior to buying a Kindle, and they continue to buy the same number of physical books. So that’s what we have seen so far and it’s a very -- obviously a very positive outcome. We hope that continues.

In terms of third-quarter results, Amazon reported $4.26 billion in revenue, up 31% from the third quarter of 2007 ($3.26 billion). The numbers came in on the low side of Amazon's forecast, when Amazon estimated revenue would be between $4.2 billion and $4.4 billion. Analysts, on average, expected revenue to be $4.28 billion. Close, but that only counts in horseshoes.

Meanwhile, net income was up 48% to $118 million, or $0.27 per share, compared with last year's net income of $80 million, or $0.19 per share.

Obviously, Amazon.com is not immune to the current economic downturn, and they noted it as they revised their fourth-quarter and fiscal year estimates. The stock was down as much as 14% in after-hours trading after the announcement.

Wall Street had been expecting $7 billion in revenue for Q4. Amazon.com said revenues will be between $6 billion and $7 billion. Amazon cut its FY08 forecast to $18.46 billion to $19.46 billion, analysts were expecting $19.49 billion.

Who knows, if the economy continues to be the disaster it currently is, even those numbers might be high.