Jeff Bezos briefly passed Bill Gates in ranking of the world’s billionaires before falling back to second place.
For half a day, Jeff Bezos was the richest man in the world, then the bottom fell out from under Amazon.com Inc.’s stock. Easy come, easy go.
Shares of the e-commerce giant Amazon that Bezos founded surged as much as 2.9 per cent to an all-time intraday high of $1,083.31, propelling Bezos’s worth past Microsoft’s Bill Gates become the world’s richest person, according to both the Bloomberg Billionaire Index and Forbes’s real time ranking of world’s billionaires. That rally gave Bezos a net worth approaching $91 billion, versus a little over $90 billion for Gates, according to Forbes.
Then just after noon ET, the Amazon’s stock reversed course, tracking the broader market’s pullback from record highs. The stock was down 0.7 per cent in afternoon trade. That brought Bezos worth back down to about $88.5 billion, below Gates worth of about $89.7 billion, according to Forbes. Bezos is by far Amazon’s largest shareholder, as he owns 79.9 million shares, or 16.7 per cent of the e-commerce giant’s shares outstanding.
With Thursday’s intraday swing in Amazon’s stock, Bezos worth went from up about $2.4 billion, to down about $655.2 million.
But don’t feel too bad for Bezos, since Amazon’s stock is still up 14 per cent over the past three months, to add nearly $10 billion to his worth. In comparison, the Nasdaq Composite has rallied 5.3 per cent and the S&P 500 index has gained 3.4% the past three months.
The achievements for Amazon and Bezos come amid what’s been a flurry of news for the company in recent weeks, from Prime Day results to the Whole Foods Market Inc. takeover bid — and just before the company is scheduled to release second-quarter results.
Amazon.com Inc. reported much lower earnings than expected Thursday, and shares declined more than 2 per cent in late trading. The e-commerce giant reported net income of $197 million, or 40 cents a share, on sales of $38 billion, a profit decline of 77% from the same quarter a year ago.
Analysts on average expected Amazon to report earnings of $1.41 a share on sales of $37.2 billion. The company’s spending cut into profit, as fulfilment costs — the amount Amazon spends to fulfil customers’ orders on its e-commerce platform — rose about 33 per cent from a year ago and spending on technology and content increased by about 43 per cent. Amazon stock traded at all-time highs this week, making Amazon the fourth U.S. company with a market capitalisation of $500 billion and briefly giving Chief Executive Jeff Bezos the title of richest man in the world, but shares declined about 2 per cent in immediate after-hours action.
