UPDATE 1-Amazon first-quarter sales forecast misses estimates, shares down

Amazon.com Inc on Thursday forecast first-quarter sales below Wall Street estimates, as it faces regulatory hurdles in India and a slowdown in e-commerce sales in Europe.

Shares of the company fell 1.1 percent to $1,700 in trading after the bell. Amazon began removing a wide array of products from its India website late on Thursday to comply with the new foreign investment curbs that kick in on Feb.1 and disallow companies from selling products via vendors in which they have an equity interest.

The company forecast net sales of between $56 billion and $60 billion for the first quarter, missing the analyst average estimate of $60.77 billion, according to IBES data from Refinitiv. Net sales for the fourth quarter rose 19.7 percent to $72.38 billion and beat the analyst average estimate of $71.87 billion on the back of a strong holiday season.

Amazon's net income rose to $3.03 billion, or $6.04 per share, in the quarter ended Dec.31 from $1.86 billion, or $3.75 per share, a year earlier, which included a tax gain. Net sales in North America, its biggest market, jumped 18.3 percent to $44.12 billion in the reported quarter.

Revenue in its Amazon Web Services cloud business surged 45.3 percent to $7.43 billion to beat estimate of $7.26 billion. (Reporting by Arjun Panchadar in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur)