How Jeff Bezos Made $23.2 Billion in One Day

Many small businesses are currently struggling to cope as the pandemic shutters stores and increases online potentials, but Amazon is far from trouble.

Bezos currently owns 11 percent of the shares in Amazon, and his personal fortune has risen by $103.8 billion since the start of the year. Let’s take a look at Jeff Bezos’ year and how it’s making him one step closer to being the world’s first trillionaire.

Amazon and the Online Boom

Since January, the online giant’s share prices have increased by 63.3 percent and rose again by eight percent on Monday 20th July to a record high share price of $4,479.

In 2020 alone, Amazon market capitalisation increased by USD $570 billion (AUD $800 billion). The coronavirus severely impacted the market in March, but with the e-commerce boom that followed, the company’s value skyrocketed.

Home deliveries have continued to skyrocket, too. Across the US and the rest of the world, the temporary closure of stores drove consumers to do their shopping online. While in Australia, the growth of Amazon is a freckle compared to the overriding popularity in the US.

 

 

In the US, 89 percent of shoppers said they’d prefer to shop with the tech giant than any other e-tailer. What does this mean? Shoppers trust Amazon. The retailer is the world’s largest online platform for books, fashion, electronics, music and other consumer products.

Moreover, it’s currently the most popular shopping site for customers in the US to spend their money, and Bezos’ team certainly reaped the rewards of this boom.

In the first quarter of 2020, Amazon brought in USD $75.5 billion (AUD $106.08 billion) in sales. Furthermore, 23 percent of American online shoppers will go to Amazon first to find inspiration if they don’t have a specific product in mind when shopping.

AWS and the Power of Cloud Platform Services

It’s not just Amazon’s shopping boom that has helped line Bezos’ pockets, it’s also its world-leading cloud platform. AWS has made a killing recently, helping the value of Amazon increase by more than 70 percent and giving the company an overall value of AUD $2.1 trillion.

While the vast majority of Amazon’s revenues are generated through the sale of its electronics and other products, a huge stake in this fortune is generated by its AWS platform. AWS is one of the most popular public cloud platform and infrastructure service worldwide. In a global survey, 64 percent of respondents said they were already using and running apps on the AWS platform.

This rapid growth isn’t expected to slow down any time soon, either. However, the impact of the coronavirus is expected to cause some friction with the tech giant.

According to revenue analysts, Amazon is expected to report at least USD $4 billion (AUD $5.62 billion) in pandemic-related expenses. This may impact its operating profits, which may result in the return of a ‘growth-over-profitability’ strategy form the market.

When the coronavirus first hit the markets, Amazon’s share prices fell 15 percent in the first two and a half weeks of March. However, the e-commerce boom helped balance its loss.

Jeff Bezos is well-placed to become the world’s first trillionnaire, and with the e-commerce boom showing no end in sight, he may get there sooner than expected.

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