Dive Brief:

• Amazon posted sweet profits of $239 million Thursday after several quarters of posting zero profit or losses. 

• Stock still fell 10% in after-market trading before rallying a bit. The stock dip was attributed to missed expectations, with the company revising its current-quarter sales to between $18.2 billion and $19.9 billion, missing the predicted $19.67 billion.

• On his traditional call with analysts yesterday, Chief Financial Officer Tom Szkutak was characteristically closed-mouthed about specific moves the company might make.

Dive Insight:

Amazon.com has been all over the place these days. The company said it might raise its Prime membership price from $79 annually by $20 to $40, complicating its competition with Netflix because the membership includes a streaming entertainment service. Amazon Prime, though, also includes a bunch of other amenities related to Kindle products and shipping options. Additionally, the company is expanding its food-delivery service, getting busy in the cloud, adding warehouses, experimenting with Sunday delivery, and possibly getting into the point-of-sales game for physical retailers —​ not to mention pie-in-the-sky innovations like drone delivery and “anticipatory shipping” it says are in its future.

Amazon’s stock did better when it was losing money, and, clearly, the company remains bold and creative, something that will continue to greatly influence the e-commerce environment for most everyone. But lowering expectations and even the Prime hike may be indications that Amazon’s potential for making money is a little smaller than we thought when it was actually posting losses.