Source: BBC

Online retailer Amazon has reported a bigger than expected quarterly loss, led by its investment in struggling online deals service LivingSocial.

Amazon made a loss of $274m (£170m) for the July to September period, compared with a profit of $63m a year earlier.

The overall loss is equivalent to 60 cents per Amazon share. Amazon said that 37 cents of the loss was due to its stake in LivingSocial.

Without this it would still have lost 23 cents, more than market targets.

Analysts had expected Amazon to post a loss of just seven cents per share.

The additional losses were caused by Amazon continuing to spend heavily on expanding its business, both in existing and new markets around the world.

Its revenues for the quarter grew 27% to £13.8bn from $10.9bn a year earlier, also below analyst expectations.  Read more.