Amazon’s record holiday sales send stock soaring toward $1 trillion valuation

Amazon.com Inc. defied its own disappointing forecast and returned to earnings growth in the holiday quarter with more than $3 billion in profit, sending shares soaring toward a $1 trillion valuation in the extended session Thursday.

The e-commerce and cloud-computing stalwart reported fourth-quarter profit of $3.3 billion, or $6.47 a share, on record quarterly sales of $87.4 billion, after reporting profit of $6.04 a share on sales of $72.38 billion a year ago. Analysts on average expected Amazon AMZN, +0.68% to report earnings of $4.04 a share on revenue of...