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Bezos’ fortune has swelled in recent months, making him the richest person in the planet by far. (Photo Credit: AP Photo/Cliff Owen, File)
Easy come, easy go: Jeff Bezos’ fortune dropped by $11 billion on Friday, a day after Amazon came out with quarterly results that fell short of the mark.
Shares of the e-commerce behemoth fell almost 8% on Friday, swiftly knocking some $70 billion off the company’s market capitalization. The selloff also dragged down the broader market, which has been flirting with correction territory this week.
Bezos’ net worth fell in lockstep, dropping by $11 billion to $135.8 billion. That is down from the $160 billion he was worth as of mid-September. Bezos, who owns 16% of Amazon, is still by far the richest man on the planet. He is trailed by Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates, whose fortune clocks in at $94.8 billion.
Amazon, which briefly became the second U.S. company to fetch a $1 trillion valuation in September, shared third quarter results on Thursday that failed to live up to the high expectations that investors and Wall Street have come to adopt.
Sales rose by 29% to $56.6 billion in the third quarter. However, that was a far cry from the $73.9 billion that analysts had projected. Amazon also told investors to brace for a slower holiday season. It expects revenue to grow just 10% to 20% in the fourth quarter, reaching $72.5 billion at most. That would make for Amazon’s worst holiday season since 2014. For the last three straight years it has boasted sales increases of more than 20% during the fourth quarter.
On a conference call with analysts, chief financial officer Brian Olsavsky said the company leaves plenty of room for error during the holiday quarter because it’s a "very difficult period" for which to issue projections. "Much of our, not only our revenue for the quarter, but also for the year comes in that very tight window between middle of November and the end of the year," he said.
So much of the stock move is about the gap between expectations and reality — and the figures that stockholders choose to focus on. Amazon has consistently begun to churn out big profits, and this latest quarter was no exception. Net income increased to $2.9 billion during the quarter, up from $256 million a year ago, surpassing analyst expectations. This is a welcome change for a company that spent many years neither promising nor delivering profits to investors — but it wasn’t enough to push the stock price higher.
Bezos, 54, started Amazon as an online bookseller out of his garage in Seattle in 1994. As the company’s stock soared, climbing 70% in the last twelve months, Bezos became the first person on the planet to boast a net worth of over $150 billion. He has been looking for ways to give away some of his fortune and in September pledged $2 billion to help homeless families and create Montessori-inspired preschools in the U.S.
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Bezos’ fortune has swelled in recent months, making him the richest person in the planet by far. (Photo Credit: AP Photo/Cliff Owen, File)
Easy come, easy go: Jeff Bezos’ fortune dropped by $11 billion on Friday, a day after Amazon came out with quarterly results that fell short of the mark.
Shares of the e-commerce behemoth fell almost 8% on Friday, swiftly knocking some $70 billion off the company’s market capitalization. The selloff also dragged down the broader market, which has been flirting with correction territory this week.
Bezos’ net worth fell in lockstep, dropping by $11 billion to $135.8 billion. That is down from the $160 billion he was worth as of mid-September. Bezos, who owns 16% of Amazon, is still by far the richest man on the planet. He is trailed by Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates, whose fortune clocks in at $94.8 billion.
Amazon, which briefly became the second U.S. company to fetch a $1 trillion valuation in September, shared third quarter results on Thursday that failed to live up to the high expectations that investors and Wall Street have come to adopt.
Sales rose by 29% to $56.6 billion in the third quarter. However, that was a far cry from the $73.9 billion that analysts had projected. Amazon also told investors to brace for a slower holiday season. It expects revenue to grow just 10% to 20% in the fourth quarter, reaching $72.5 billion at most. That would make for Amazon’s worst holiday season since 2014. For the last three straight years it has boasted sales increases of more than 20% during the fourth quarter.
On a conference call with analysts, chief financial officer Brian Olsavsky said the company leaves plenty of room for error during the holiday quarter because it’s a “very difficult period” for which to issue projections. “Much of our, not only our revenue for the quarter, but also for the year comes in that very tight window between middle of November and the end of the year,” he said.
So much of the stock move is about the gap between expectations and reality — and the figures that stockholders choose to focus on. Amazon has consistently begun to churn out big profits, and this latest quarter was no exception. Net income increased to $2.9 billion during the quarter, up from $256 million a year ago, surpassing analyst expectations. This is a welcome change for a company that spent many years neither promising nor delivering profits to investors — but it wasn’t enough to push the stock price higher.
Bezos, 54, started Amazon as an online bookseller out of his garage in Seattle in 1994. As the company’s stock soared, climbing 70% in the last twelve months, Bezos became the first person on the planet to boast a net worth of over $150 billion. He has been looking for ways to give away some of his fortune and in September pledged $2 billion to help homeless families and create Montessori-inspired preschools in the U.S.
