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Amazon's outlook on the fourth quarter is much different from that of its rival eBay, which is taking a cautious outlook for North American sales given what it called concerns over the economy. In a third-quarter earnings call with analysts on Thursday, Amazon CFO Tom Szkutak said Amazon was giving a large range in guidance for the fourth quarter, but when it came to North America, said "we're excited about the quarter and getting ready for customers."

Amazon revenue increased 24% to $17.09 billion in the third quarter, or 26% excluding foreign exchange Net loss was $41 million in the third quarter compared with a net loss of $274 million in third quarter 2012, which had included a loss of $169 million related to LivingSocial. (eBay revenue was up 14% in Q3 year-over-year with net income of $689 million.)

In the North America segment, Amazon Q3 revenue grew 31% to $10.3 billion. In the International segment, revenue grew 15% to $6.79 billion.

Worldwide paid unit growth was 29%. Active customer accounts exceeded 224 million. Worldwide active seller accounts were more than 2 million, and seller units represented 40% of paid units.

Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos said in the earnings press release it has been a busy few months for the company - among the developments in the last 90 days he deemed worth of mention included:

• brought 8 million square feet of fulfillment center capacity online;
• deployed 1,382 Kiva robots in three FCs;
• provided a new venue for artists to reach customers;
• signed up millions of new Prime members;
• announced Login & Pay.

And of course it was an especially busy quarter for him personally as he purchased the Washington Post newspaper company.

After eBay had spooked analysts during its Q3 conference call last week, a couple of them asked Szkutak on Thursday about Amazon's outlook.

Asked one, "Maybe you could comment on what you're seeing domestically and internationally in terms of ecommerce trends in the current quarter? Does anything specific stand out, especially in North America, given some of the commentary we've heard from some of your competitors?

"You mentioned the trends in North America," said Amazon's CFO. "What you've seen is really a nice, steady acceleration of growth since Q4 last year. If you look back to Q4 last year for North America specifically, and you just trace that back over the past four quarters you see a really nice sequential increase from quarter to quarter."

As to what's driving North American revenue growth, Szkutak said a lot of it was focusing on retail basics, along with improving seller performance.

Amazon's CFO sounded like a retailer on the earnings call. Amazon added a lot of selection in the last 12 months, he said, and was making sure they have in-stock levels of that selection going into the holiday shopping season.

One analyst asked about a metric not typically shared by Amazon but mentioned in its earnings press release: it had "signed up millions of new Prime members" during Q3. Was that normal to sign up millions in a quarter, or was that special this quarter. Szkutak said there was not much he could add to that, but said Amazon Prime is growing very fast. "It's exciting, that's why we put it in there."

In answer to a question about performance of its grocery delivery service Amazon Fresh, Szkutak said Amazon was selling more general merchandise as a result of more frequent deliveries in the LA market where it's being tested.

A transcript of the earnings call is available on SeekingAlpha.com.

Comment on the EcommerceBytes Blog where you'll find Amazon's earnings press release.

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About the author:

Ina Steiner is co-founder and Editor of EcommerceBytes and has been reporting on ecommerce since 1999. She's a widely cited authority on marketplace selling and is author of "Turn eBay Data Into Dollars" (McGraw-Hill 2006). Her blog was featured in the book, "Blogging Heroes" (Wiley 2008). Follow her on Twitter at @ecommercebytes and send news tips to ina@ecommercebytes.com.

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