Amazon shares surge making CEO Bezos even richer as company hits $1 trillion in value
CEO Jeff Bezos is tipping his hat to Prime Members
Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos' personal life continues to steal the headlines but it is business as usual for the e-commerce giant which posted better-than-expected fourth-quarter results.
Shares are surging in the premarket by 9 percent, putting shares around $2,033.
Shares rallied in the extended session trading above the $2,000 per share level. The jump will make Bezos, already the world's richest man at $116 billion per Forbes, even richer when the shares open Friday. He remains the company's largest shareholder.
The stock has trailed the broader market over the past 52 weeks rising 11 percent compared to the S&P 500's 22 percent gain.
| Ticker | Security | Last | Change | Change % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AMZN | AMAZON.COM INC. | 198.47 | -4.41 | -2.17% |
The company posted revenue of $87.4 billion which beat the $86.09 billion estimate. Profits came in at $6.47 per share, well ahead of the $4.03 estimate.
Bezos credited Amazon Prime for the company's growth.
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“Prime membership continues to get better for customers year after year. And customers are responding — more people joined Prime this quarter than ever before, and we now have over 150 million paid Prime members around the world,” said Bezos in the earnings release.
He also credited faster delivery for items including groceries, helped by the company's Whole Foods acquisition and the evolution of streaming driven by original Prime Video content.
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AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool
Bezos and his girlfriend Lauren Sanchez continue to make headlines globe trotting. This week the pair was spotted in New York City, this followed a recent trip to India where they posed for photos at a blue carpet event in Mumbai organized by Amazon Prime Video on Thursday.
The trips coincide as new details emerged in the case of Bezos' leaked intimate text messages that were intended for Sanchez. Prosecutors have evidence showing that Sanchez sent the private texts between her and Bezos, with whom she was having an affair, before his divorce from wife MacKenzie Bezos — to her brother, who sold them to the National Enquirer, The Wall Street Journal reported last week.
