Jeff Bezos’ wealth balloons by $12 billion as Amazon stock soars 11 percent
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos saw his personal net worth increase by a whopping $12 billion on Friday morning as the e-commerce giant’s stock price soared by some 11% in pre-noon trading — the largest single-day jump so far this year.
The Seattle-based company, whose stock was trading at nearly $143 per share as of 11:30 a.m. Eastern time on Friday, surged after dazzling Wall Street with an earnings report that blew away analyst expectations.
Bezos, the third richest person in the world behind Tesla and X mogul Elon Musk and luxury brand merchant Bernard Arnault, is now worth an estimated $163.5 billion, according to Forbes.
The 59-year-old Bezos, who stepped down from the CEO role at Amazon in late 2021 so that he could focus on his space exploration firm Blue Origin, derives his wealth from ownership in Amazon stock.
He has also spent much of his free time globetrotting on his $500 million yacht with fiance Lauren Sanchez after the couple got engaged in May.
Bezos, who still serves as Amazon’s executive chairman, owns around 992.6 million shares, according to the company’s filings with the SEC.
Amazon, which added about $120 billion to its market value, surged on Friday on signs that both its growth engines, e-commerce and cloud-computing, were faring well in an uncertain economy, helping shield the broader market from Apple’s 2.5% slide after gloomy iPhone sales.
The company’s sales grew 11% to $134.4 billion in the second quarter — an increase from $121.2 billion during the second quarter of a year ago.
The sales figures blew away analyst predictions of $131.4 billion.
Amazon also reported a sharp increase in profit as its net income reached $6.7 billion in the second quarter — a far cry from the $2 billion net loss of the second quarter last year.
Amazon Web Services, the money-making cloud computing division, generated $22.14 billion in sales — surpassing analyst estimates of $21.71 billion.
The company said it expects its net sales to continue growing in the third quarter to between $138 billion and $143 billion — an increase of between 9% and 13% from the same quarter last year.
Bezos’ successor, CEO Andy Jassy, credited AWS’s embrace of a “slew of generative AI releases” which allowed it to “add to its meaningful leadership position” in cloud-computing.
Jassy also cited the “strong demand” for advertising services fueled in part by Amazon’s acquisition of broadcast rights to the NFL’s “Thursday Night Football” package.
