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 | 15,387.58 | 52.30 | 0.34% |
| Nasdaq | 3,502.12 | 5.69 | 0.16% |
| S&P 500 | 1,669.16 | 2.87 | 0.17% |
| Treasuries | 1.94 | -0.02 | -1.07% |
| Company | Price | Change | % Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bank of America Corp... | 13.44 | -0.07 | -0.52% |
| Ford Motor Co | 14.96 | -0.10 | -0.66% |
| Microsoft Corp | 34.85 | -0.23 | -0.66% |
| Cisco Systems Inc | 24.01 | 0.06 | 0.27% |
| Merck & Co Inc | 47.33 | 2.12 | 4.69% |
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