Amazon Posts Record Year-End Sales, But Offers Few Details

The year-end shopping season was good to Amazon.com.

The Seattle-based company said it posted record numbers in a variety of categories, but offered few details of its haul.

As it has done every year for the past several years, the online retail giant provided some morsels of its success during the most important shopping season of the year without actually disclosing the sort of financial information investors crave.

The company noted, for example, that it added more than 3 million members worldwide to its Prime subscription service during the third week of December. But it did not disclose the overall number of Prime members, other than to say it’s in the “tens of millions worldwide.”

The company also said that sales of Amazon devices “doubled last year’s record-setting … shopping season with millions of devices sold.” But Amazon didn’t say how many Fire tablets, Kindle e-readers or Echo voice-controlled speakers were purchased.

Amazon also noted that Dec. 24 was the largest sales day ever for Prime Now, a service offered in several cities, offering delivery as quickly as one-hour.

And the company said it shipped to 185 countries during the year-end shopping season.