NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Shares of Amazon.com jumped in after-hours trading Thursday after the online retailer easily topped Wall Street's expectations during the fourth-quarter holiday shopping season.
Net income for the three months ending Dec. 31 jumped 71% to $384 million, or 85 cents per share. Revenue rose 42% to $9.5 billion from a year ago.
Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters were looking for earnings of 72 cents a share on sales of $9 billion.
As part of the earnings release, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos highlighted the success of his company's Kindle electronic reader. "Millions of people now own Kindles," he said in a prepared statement. "We sell 6 Kindle books for every 10 physical books."
Looking ahead, Amazon forecast first-quarter sales between $6.45 billion and $7 billion, which is well above analysts' expectations of $6.36 billion.
Amazon.com (AMZN, Fortune 500) shares rose 2% after the closing bell after adding $3.28 to end at $126.03 in regular trade. 
| Index | Last | Change | % Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dow | 12,454.83 | -74.92 | -0.60% |
| Nasdaq | 2,837.53 | -1.85 | -0.07% |
| S&P 500 | 1,317.82 | -2.86 | -0.22% |
| Treasuries | 1.74 | -0.01 | -0.80% |
| Company | Price | Change | % Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bank of America Corp... | 7.15 | 0.01 | 0.14% |
| Sprint Nextel Corp | 2.62 | 0.09 | 3.56% |
| Cisco Systems Inc | 16.33 | -0.06 | -0.37% |
| Chesapeake Energy Co... | 15.81 | 0.23 | 1.48% |
| Ford Motor Co | 10.60 | 0.01 | 0.09% |
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