Amazon founder and Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos is once again the richest person in the world, according to both Forbes’ Real-Time Billionaire Rankings and the Bloomberg Billionaires Index which now put his net worth at approximately $93.8 billion. Mr. Bezos had his personal valuation jump by nearly $10.5 billion earlier this week after Amazon published its consolidated financial report for the third quarter of the year and revealed yet another revenue spike despite simultaneously expanding its operations in an aggressive manner, in addition to recording its tenth consecutive quarterly profit. Investors and analysts were impressed with Amazon’s performance in the three-month period ending September 30th and the company’s stock jumped from $972.43 to $1,058.09 when the market opened on Friday, having surpassed the $1,100 mark and ended the day at $1,100.95 when trading was concluded two days ago. The market cap jump also saw Mr. Bezos’s stake in Amazon increase by more than 12 percentage points, putting him above Bill Gates on the two most established lists of the world’s billionaires.
It remains to be seen whether Amazon CEO can maintain his title in the coming months as he already lost it shortly after becoming the richest person on the planet for the first time over the summer, with that particular spike in his net worth also being prompted by the Seattle-based company’s quarterly financial report. His new stint as the world’s top billionaire is already longer than his previous one which only lasted several hours in late July and even if he loses the title for the second time, he’s likely to regain it come early 2018 as Amazon is projecting the final quarter of the year to be highly lucrative for the firm, largely thanks to the holiday period and increased sales that traditionally follow it in all consumer-oriented market segments.
Amazon’s aggressive expansion strategy that propelled the company to one of the world’s corporate heavyweights is largely expected to continue going forward as the e-commerce and technology giant is still pursuing major growth opportunities on all fronts. While the firm’s bottom line has now been in the black for two and a half years, it’s still minuscule compared to the size of its operations due to its dynamic approach to reinvestments, with virtually all industry watchers praising this business strategy as highly sustainable.
Bloomberg Billionaires Index