Amazon on Thursday said it was raising the price of its Prime subscriptions, as it looks to offset higher shipping costs and wages even after beating profit expectations for the holiday quarter.

Axar.az reports that shares rose 17 per cent in after-hours trading, after dropping about 8 per cent before the market's close as part of a broader technology stock sell-off.

If shares rise on Friday by that much, it would be the stock's biggest percentage gain since October 2009.

For the holiday quarter, Amazon earned $14.3 billion, double its net income from a year earlier. That included a pre-tax gain of $11.8bn from its stake in electric carmaker Rivian Automotive.

On the heels of a windfall from greater at-home shopping in the pandemic, Amazon has poured money into its operations to manage disruptions, most recently the Omicron variant of the coronavirus.

It has marketed signing bonuses to attract hundreds of thousands of workers in a tight labour market and it has paid more for shipping because it could not get products into the right warehouses.