Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN | AMZN Price Prediction), has watched his net worth slide by $24 billion this year to $218 billion, which puts him second behind Elon Musk, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Musk’s net worth has dropped $130 billion this year to $303 billion, mostly because of the decline in Tesla stock, which is down 44% this year.
Bezos owns 9% of Amazon, making him the largest shareholder. The stock is down 12% this year, and its market cap is now $2.04 trillion. That makes it the fourth most valuable company in the world, just ahead of Alphabet, which is worth $1.97 trillion.
Prospects for Amazon
In July 2021, Bezos turned over the CEO role to Andy Jassy. He is currently the executive chair of the board of directors. There is no evidence he interferes in daily decisions.
Bezos started Amazon in 1994 before fast internet broadband was available. It ran on the then-current dial-up internet, which was not replaced for almost a decade. The company started out selling books.
Amazon ranks number two on the Fortune 500 list, which means it is the second-largest U.S. company based on revenue, with a figure of $638 billion last year. It trails only Walmart, which had revenue of $680 billion. The two are rivals. Put simply, Walmart is the leader in the brick-and-mortar retail business. Amazon holds the same position in e-commerce.
Amazon is divided into two parts. The first is its legacy e-commerce operations. Last year, its North American revenue was $387 billion, and its operating income was $25 billion. Its international e-commerce operation had revenue of $142 billion, with an operating income of $4 billion. AWS has revenue of $108 billion, on which it had operating income of $40 billion.
AWS is considered Amazon’s most valuable division. Its revenue was 17% of the company’s total revenue but 66% of operating income. AWS is the world’s largest cloud computing business by market share. It is also the part of the company that is most likely to adopt artificial intelligence (AI) to increase its functions sharply.
Bezos is rich enough that a modest movement of Amazon’s stock up or down does not matter.
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