Tag Archives: Jeff Bezos

Elon Musk says a global recession could last until the spring of 2024

Tesla Inc CEO Elon Musk attends the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai, China August 29, 2019.

Aly Song | Reuters

Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk thinks the global economic decline can last for another year and a half.

In a Twitter exchange early Friday morning Eastern time, the mercurial electric car executive and world’s richest man said a recession could continue “until spring of ’24.”

The remarks came in response to a tweet from Shibetoshi Nakamoto, the online name for Dogecoin co-creator Billy Markus, who noted that current coronavirus numbers “are actually pretty low. i [sic] guess all we have to worry about now is the impending global recession and nuclear apocalypse.”

“It sure would be nice to have one year without a horrible global event,” Musk replied.

Tesla Owners Silicon Valley, a Twitter account with nearly 600,000 followers, then asked Musk how long he thought the recession would last, to which he replied, “Just guessing, but probably until spring of ’24.”

Global GDP grew 6% in 2021 but is expected to decelerate to 3.2% this year and 2.7% in 2023, according to the International Monetary Fund. That would mark the weakest pace of growth since 2021 outside of the financial crisis in 2008 and the brief plunge in the early days of the Covid pandemic. The Federal Reserve projects GDP in the U.S. to grow just 0.2% this year and 1.2% in 2023.

Musk becomes the latest corporate titan to express reservations about the economy.

In a tweet Wednesday, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said it’s time to “batten down the hatches” in preparation for rough economic waters ahead. That tweet accompanied a video of Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon, who said in a CNBC interview that he thinks there’s a “good chance” of a recession in the U.S.

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon also has been warning of economic turmoil ahead.

Musk’s comment also came amid a rough week for Tesla stock as the automaker missed revenue estimates and cautioned about a potential delivery shortfall this year.

During the analyst call, he expressed more confidence in the U.S. economy than other parts of the world. He did note the impact that interest rate increases are having on the economy.

“The U.S. actually is in – North America’s in pretty good health,” he said. “A little bit of that is raising interest rates more than they should, but I think they’ll eventually realize that and bring back down, I think.”

However, he said China is in “quite a burst of a recession of sorts” driven by the real estate market, while Europe “has a recession of sorts, driven by energy.”

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Amazon founder Jeff Bezos warns it’s time to ‘batten down the hatches’

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos speaks during the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland, Britain, November 2, 2021.

Paul Ellis | Reuters

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has become the latest corporate leader to warn about the state of the economy, cautioning that rougher times are likely ahead.

In a tweet posted Tuesday evening, the former president and CEO of the online retailing giant echoed comments that Goldman Sachs Chief Executive David Solomon made to CNBC earlier in the day.

“Yep, the probabilities in this economy tell you batten down the hatches,” Bezos said in a comment attached to a clip of Solomon’s “Squawk Box” interview.

Solomon, the head of the Wall Street financial giant, said it’s time for both corporate leaders and investors to understand the risks building up, and to prepare accordingly.

Solomon spoke after his firm had just posted quarterly earnings results that beat Wall Street estimates. Yet he said a recession could be looming as the economy deals with persistently high inflation and a Federal Reserve trying to lower prices through a series of aggressive interest rate increases.

“I think you have to expect that there’s more volatility on the horizon,” Solomon said. “Now, that doesn’t mean for sure that we have a really difficult economic scenario. But on the distribution of outcomes, there’s a good chance that we have a recession in the United States.”

Fed officials have also been warning that a recession is possible as a result of the monetary policy tightening, though they hope to avoid a downturn. Policymakers in September estimated that gross domestic product would grow just 0.2% in 2022 and rebound in 2023, but to only 1.2%. GDP contracted in both the first and second quarters this year, meeting a commonly held definition of a recession.

There have been mixed signals lately from corporate leaders.

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has been warning of troubles ahead, saying recently that the situation is “very, very serious” and that the U.S. could slip into recession in the next six months.

However, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan told CNBC on Monday that credit card data and related information show that consumer spending has held up.

“In the current environment, the consumer is quite good and strong,” he said on “Closing Bell.”

Moynihan acknowledged that the Fed’s efforts could slow the economy, but noted that “the consumer’s hanging in there.”

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Indian tycoon Gautam Adani replaces Jeff Bezos as world’s second-richest person

Jeff Bezos has dropped to third place in the race for riches.

The Amazon founder is now the world’s third-richest person, after Indian business tycoon Gautam Adani leapfrogged Bezos in the latest Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index.

Adani has amassed an estimated $146.8 billion fortune that only trails Elon Musk’s $263.9 billion, according to Bloomberg News.

It’s the first time a person from Asia has ranked so highly on the Bloomberg’s list, which has long been dominated by white billionaires.

Bezos trails Adani by just $19 million. Shares of e-commerce goliath Amazon are down 26% this year.

Meanwhile, shares of Adani Enterprises Ltd. have surged the past week, and some of his group of companies climbed more than 1,000% since 2020, according to reports. 

Adani’s rise to No. 2 coincides with a tech selloff that has chopped more than $45 billion from Bezos’s fortune since January. Bezos — once the world’s richest person — also saw his net worth significantly drop after his 2019 divorce from ex-wife MacKenzie Scott, who received 4% of Amazon.

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Amazon Says FTC Is Harassing Jeff Bezos, Top Executives in Prime Probe

WASHINGTON—

Amazon.com Inc.

AMZN 1.11%

is accusing the Federal Trade Commission of making excessive and unreasonable demands on founder

Jeff Bezos

and company executives as the agency probes Amazon’s Prime membership program.

In a petition to the FTC filed earlier this month and recently made public, Amazon says the agency’s demands on the company have been “overly broad and burdensome,” and its legal tactics have been unfair.

It specifically requests that the FTC quash civil subpoenas issued to Mr. Bezos and Chief Executive

Andy Jassy,

contending that the FTC hasn’t identified a reason why their testimony is necessary.

An FTC spokeswoman declined to comment.

The commission launched the Amazon investigation and it wasn’t immediately clear how it would respond to the company’s request. But the 49-page filing offers a glimpse into the FTC’s investigative practices, at least through Amazon’s lens.

The filing offers further insight into the FTC’s focus on so-called dark patterns—online platform-design tactics intended to manipulate users into signing up for unwanted or unnecessary services, or to prevent them from canceling.

Dark patterns have been a particular concern for FTC Chairwoman Lina Khan, and the agency last year issued a new enforcement-policy statement warning companies against deploying them.

Seattle headquarters of Amazon, which contends that its sign-up and cancellation processes are clear and straightforward.



Photo:

David Ryder/Getty Images

The FTC’s original civil subpoena to Amazon said its Prime investigation focused on whether the company has engaged in unfair or deceptive practices by automatically enrolling consumers in the service, or failing to provide a simple mechanism for them to stop recurring charges, according to Amazon’s petition.

The Amazon filing, which was earlier reported by Business Insider, contends that its sign-up and cancellation processes are clear and straightforward.

To be sure, legal disputes over the scope of government investigations are common. Still, the Amazon petition also could provide further ammunition for business critics of Ms. Khan, who has become a target for groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce who say she is overstepping her authority.

“The FTC is proving time and time again under Khan’s leadership that it isn’t acting in good faith, it’s not acting within the law, and is intent on hurting tech,” said Carl Szabo, vice president and general counsel of NetChoice, an industry-backed group that favors market-oriented policies toward the internet.

Among other claims, the Amazon filing asserts that the agency staff has come under pressure from FTC brass to wrap up the investigation later this year and has made excessive and unreasonable demands for information.

The FTC has been investigating Amazon’s marketing and cancellation practices for its Prime subscription service since March 2021, according to Amazon, which said that the probe has expanded into other subscription programs.

Under Chairwoman Lina Khan, the FTC has taken a more aggressive stance on enforcement.



Photo:

Tom Williams/Zuma Press

Those other programs include Audible, Amazon Music, Kindle Unlimited and Subscribe & Save, according to Amazon’s petition.

Amazon says it produced about 37,000 pages of documents in response to the agency’s initial demands. The company says the FTC staff unexpectedly disengaged from the investigation for several months.

Then in April, the company says it was notified that the FTC had put a new attorney in charge of the investigation and that staff was under “tremendous pressure” to finish the investigation—and was under instructions to make recommendations on the case before the fall.

At the same time, the staff increased its investigative demands and imposed tight deadlines for complying. The FTC also sought the testimony of almost 20 current and former Amazon employees by delivering requests to their homes, according to the petition.

The FTC under Ms. Khan has taken a more aggressive stance on enforcement. Amazon had previously sought, without success, for Ms. Khan to recuse herself from the investigation based on her past critical statements of the tech giant.

According to the Amazon petition, the FTC staff also has attempted to prevent Amazon attorneys from representing individual employees, according to the petition. The company says that is unfair.

The company also complained that the FTC is unfairly demanding to question Messrs. Bezos and Jassy about issues they don’t follow closely.

“Preparing either to testify regarding the granular details of business operations for which they have no unique knowledge and no day-to-day responsibilities would be a tremendous burden on them, on counsel and on Amazon,” the petition says.

Under FTC rules, companies can object to investigative demands made by the agency’s staff. The commission has 40 days to respond to the petition. Amazon’s petition seeks to quash or limit the agency’s latest civil subpoena to the company, or at least extend the deadline for compliance to mid-September.

Amazon’s trouble in Washington isn’t limited to the FTC. Democratic and Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee have asked the Justice Department to investigate Amazon and some of its executives for what they said was possible criminal obstruction of Congress.

Amazon is also a target of antitrust legislation that, if passed, would bar it and other online giants from giving preferential treatment to their own products and services, such as steering consumers to in-house products instead of competitors’ offerings.

Write to John D. McKinnon at john.mckinnon@wsj.com and Dave Michaels at dave.michaels@wsj.com

Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

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Andy Jassy just wrapped up a rocky first year after as Amazon CEO

Andy Jassy, chief executive officer of Amazon.Com Inc., during the GeekWire Summit in Seattle, Washington, U.S., on Tuesday, Oct. 5, 2021.

David Ryder | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Andy Jassy celebrates his one-year anniversary as Amazon CEO on Tuesday. Celebrates is probably not the operative word.

Jassy, a 25-year Amazon veteran, succeeded Jeff Bezos on July 5, 2021. A few days later, the stock hit a record high. Since then, it’s down more than 40%, including a 35% drop in the second quarter, the steepest decline for any period since 2001.

As just the second CEO for Amazon since Bezos started the company in 1994, Jassy is staring into a macroeconomic hurricane entirely out of his control. From the ongoing fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic, record inflation and rising interest rates to supply chain constraints and the war in Ukraine, Amazon faces the prospects of rising costs and slower consumer spending all while investors rotate out of the tech stocks that drove the recent bull market.

But it’s not just the economy. There’s also the threat of antitrust regulation as lawmakers get closer to passing landmark legislation that seeks to curb the power of Amazon and other tech giants. And Jassy is grappling with a labor battle that culminated in a Staten Island, New York, warehouse voting in April to form the company’s first U.S. union. Amazon is challenging the union effort in court. Meanwhile, some of the company’s most senior executives have hit the exits.

Last July, when Jassy officially took over as CEO, Amazon’s business was stronger than ever. The company had just notched its first $100 billion quarter, reflecting the pandemic-driven surge in e-commerce activity that pushed Amazon to expand at a breakneck pace.

The story has rapidly devolved. Amazon is now shedding some of the warehouse space it added during the pandemic. And after months of worker shortages, the company is now overstaffed in its fulfillment network, as the cooling of e-commerce means that many recent hires are no longer needed.

With the slowing in its core business, Amazon announced in April that it had booked its weakest quarterly revenue growth since the dot-com bust in 2001, and its first quarterly loss since 2015.

Investors are now considering whether the poor results are a reflection of management struggles or merely a brief setback as the company emerges from a global pandemic and reckons with a sputtering economy.

When asked if Jassy is responsible for warehouse overexpansion and recent weakness in Amazon’s business, Tom Forte, an analyst at D.A. Davidson, said the new CEO still gets the benefit of the doubt.

“Today, I still feel like the answer is no,” said Forte, who recommends buying the stock. “But I am monitoring if there is a sustained multi-year period of weakness in the stock, at what point will investors start looking to Andy and start assigning blame.”

Forte isn’t alone. Following the company’s first-quarter earnings report, several Wall Street analysts said Amazon’s challenges are likely to work themselves out over the coming months.

But with a workforce of over 1.6 million and an investor base that has come to expect operational excellence, Jassy has plenty to prove regardless of the direction of the economy.

“My core belief is that large companies face the greatest risks internally,” Matt McIlwain, a managing director at Madrona Venture Group in Seattle and a longtime investor in Amazon, said in an email. “The key for Amazon will be to keep embracing their culture of pioneering and to make decisions with speed/agility so that they can continue to grow at their scale.”

An Amazon spokesperson declined to comment for this story.

Keeping workers happy

The labor challenges aren’t likely to go away anytime soon.

Since the union victory on Staten Island, Amazon has aggressively fought back against other organizing efforts, and has staunchly maintained its opposition to unions. Following reports of unsafe working conditions in its warehouses, Jassy has said Amazon’s injury rates are “sometimes misunderstood,” but he acknowledged Amazon can do more to improve injury rates inside its facilities.

“At our scale (we hired over 300,000 people in 2021 alone, many of whom were new to this sort of work and needed training), it takes rigorous analysis, thoughtful problem-solving, and a willingness to invent to get to where you want,” Jassy wrote in his first letter to shareholders in April. “We’ve been dissecting every process path to discern how we can further improve.”

Office workers have their own set of demands and have gained considerable leverage, commanding higher wages, better benefits and greater work-from-home flexibility. Last October, Amazon retreated from its office-centric culture when it allowed individual managers to decide how often their employees would be required to come into the office.

The Amazon headquarters sits virtually empty on March 10, 2020 in downtown Seattle, Washington. In response to the coronavirus outbreak, Amazon recommended all employees in its Seattle office to work from home, leaving much of downtown nearly void of people.

John Moore | Getty Images

Earlier this year, in response to the strengthening labor market, Amazon boosted its maximum base salary to $350,000, up from its previous max of $160,000.

That’s not enough to keep some of the company’s longest-tenured employees, who have been departing at a rapid clip. The trend preceded Jassy’s tenure. More than 45 top executives departed Amazon between the start of 2020 and April 2021, according to a tally by Business Insider, an unusually high number for the company.

Under Jassy, the exodus has continued. Last month, 23-year Amazon veteran Dave Clark resigned a little over a year after taking over the role of retail chief from Jeff Wilke, one of Bezos’ top lieutenants, who stepped down in early 2021. Later in June, two prominent Black leaders — operations executive Dave Bozeman and Alicia Boler-Davis, senior vice president of global customer fulfillment and a member of the company’s leadership team — announced their departures.

Ian Freed, a former vice president at Amazon who oversaw the development of key projects like Alexa and the Kindle, said that as the company gets larger, it could get harder to attract and retain the same kind of talent.

“The fact that it’s growing, it’s a desirable place for innovators to go, whether they’re engineers, marketers or retail experts or whatever, if that goes away, I feel like a lot of things start to fall apart,” Freed said. “I don’t necessarily think that’s going away, but I think it’s always the biggest risk.”

Amazon has said it has high retention rates. The average tenure for vice presidents is about 10 years, and for senior vice presidents it is “much longer,” the company said.

Finding Amazon’s fourth pillar

In his 2014 letter to shareholders, Bezos laid out three areas of Amazon that he has often referred to as the “pillars” of the business: Prime, Marketplace and Amazon Web Services.

In the years since, investors have looked for a potential fourth or fifth pillar. They’ll now be asking Jassy what can move the needle at a company with a $1.1 trillion dollar market cap.

Bezos greenlit ambitious projects like the Echo smart speaker and delivery drones, while taking on wacky, ambitious ventures outside of Amazon, such as investing $42 million to build the “Clock of the Long Now,” which will tell time for the next 10,000 years, and starting space flight company Blue Origin.

Jeff Bezos, CEO and founder of Amazon, holds the new Amazon Kindle Fire HD at the product’s introduction in Santa Monica, Calif., Thursday, Sept. 6, 2012. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon)

Reed Saxon

Jassy’s big innovation was AWS. After serving as Bezos’ “shadow” in the early 2000s, Jassy was personally authorized by Bezos to go start the cloud business, which has transformed into a $60 billion juggernaut and emerged as the company’s profit center.

“Andy is a visionary in his own right, but in a different way than Jeff,” said Craig Berman, a former Amazon vice president for global communications, in an interview. “I think it would be horribly unfair to say that Jeff is a better innovator or builder than Andy.”

During Amazon’s all-hands meeting in April, Jassy reminded staffers that he “was here when we were a books only retailer.” From there, the company went into music, video, consumer electronics, cloud computing, devices and streaming entertainment, Jassy said at the meeting, a recording of which was obtained by CNBC.

As he explores new markets, Jassy said the company asks if the opportunity is big enough, if it’s being well served, if Amazon has a “differentiated approach” and if it has confidence or “can we acquire confidence quickly?”

“If we like the answers to those questions, we will pursue that opportunity, even if it’s really different from what we’ve done in the past,” Jassy said. “And that philosophy has been what you see in the various customer experiences and business segments that we’ve been pursuing.”

WATCH: CNBC’s full interview with Amazon CEO Andy Jassy

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Lewd Fire Emblem Warriors Three Hopes Typo Popular On Amazon

Illustration: Nintendo / Amazon / Kotaku

If you, like me, were intrigued by the recent smattering of Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes reviews and went looking for a copy on Amazon, the online retailer probably responded with a funny question: “Did you mean Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Holes?” Thank you for asking, Bezos-mart, but no, I literally didn’t mean anything of the sort.

Three Hopes is the upcoming Warriors-style sequel to Fire Emblem: Three Houses, the 2019 game that reignited just about everyone’s love for the classic Nintendo series. Other franchises have gotten the musou treatment in recent years as well, most notably The Legend of Zelda and Persona 5. Folks are apparently so excited about Three Hopes, however, that they’re mistyping searches en masse, or at least enough that Amazon’s algorithms think “Three Holes” might be the game’s real subtitle.

And it’s not just me. Social media is rife with similar stories from people who went looking for Three Hopes on Amazon, only to be asked if they meant “Three Holes” instead. In fact, a Twitter search for “Fire Emblem Three Holes” reveals several people using the term both jokingly and mistakenly outside of the Amazon context. Maybe the romance-heavy turn the series has taken with modern installments means folks can’t help but imagine lewd scenarios while purchasing this spin-off.

I guess the only question that remains is if “Three Holes” refers to a single person or a sort of polyamorous, multi-lover scenario. I can’t believe I just typed that out.

Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes lands on Switch this Friday, June 24. Maybe players will get this nonsense out of their systems when the full game is finally available, but going by experience, I fully expect everyone to go way too far with their love and attraction towards these digital characters. As long as you all keep your wandering eyes away from Yuri, my actual real-deal boyfriend, we won’t have any problems.

 



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Amazon’s Bezos criticizes Biden admin, says inflation hurts the poor

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos arrives for his meeting with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson at the UK diplomatic residence on September 20, 2021 in New York City.

Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos tweeted on Sunday that inflation is most hurtful to the least affluent in the United States, and criticized President Joe Biden for the second time in a week for his comments on inflation.

“In fact, the administration tried hard to inject even more stimulus into an already over-heated, inflationary economy and only Manchin saved them from themselves,” Bezos wrote on Twitter. “Inflation is a regressive tax that most hurts the least affluent. Misdirection doesn’t help the country.”

The comments from Bezos were in response to a thread in which President Joe Biden claimed the U.S. was on track to see its largest yearly deficit decline ever, totaling $1.5 trillion. Biden also took aim at former President Donald Trump, who saw the deficit “increase every single year” in office, he wrote.

On Friday, Bezos called out President Biden over a tweet that said taxing wealthy corporations can help lower inflation. Bezos urged the Disinformation Board to review the tweet.

“Raising corp taxes is fine to discuss,” Bezos wrote on Friday. “Taming inflation is critical to discuss. Mushing them together is just misdirection.”

In both instances, the president did not explicitly name Amazon, though he has previously commented on the e-commerce giant’s tax record.

Comments from both President Biden and Bezos come as inflation in the United States sits near 40-year highs and Federal Reserve officials look to hike interest rates to combat the issue.



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Jeff Bezos Demands Twitter Probe After Biden Calls For CorporationsTo Pay Fair Share Of Taxes

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos called on Twitter to investigate a message by Joe Biden after the president tweeted that wealthier corporations should “pay their fair share” of taxes.

Bezos wants Twitter’s “Disinformation Board” to probe Biden’s message because he claimed the president inaccurately linked higher corporate taxes to lowering inflation. He allowed that raising corporate taxes is “fine to discuss.” But linking the taxes to lowering inflation is a “non sequitur,” he insisted.

Higher corporate taxes can in fact lower inflation, according to economists, by tamping down an overheated economy which causes inflation.

More money in the Treasury from corporations could also help provide aid to people suffering in a cooling economy, by expanding or increasing the amount of unemployment benefits, for example.

Twitter users weren’t in the mood to cut Bezos any slack.

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Jeff Bezos asks disinformation board to fact check Biden tweet

Amazon boss Jeff Bezos said the nation’s newly formed Disinformation Governance Board should take a look at the White House after a tweet from President Biden which attempted to link skyrocketing inflation with the country’s corporate tax rate.

“The newly created Disinformation Board should review this tweet, or maybe they need to form a new Non Sequitur Board instead,” Bezos scoffed in tweet late Friday night. “Raising corp taxes is fine to discuss. Taming inflation is critical to discuss. Mushing them together is just misdirection.”

Inflation — which took off the moment President Biden stepped into the White House — surged to 8.3% in April, approaching a 40 year record. Prices for basic commodities like food and gasoline have soared.

“You want to bring down inflation?,” Biden asked in a tweet Friday. “Let’s make sure the wealthiest corporations pay their fair share.”

The Department of Homeland Security’s Disinformation Governance Board has come in for widespread criticism over its stated goal to fight disinformation on social media.

It’s director Nina Jankowicz has been derided as a partisan hack, who has publicly talked about verified (and overwhelmingly left-leaning) Twitter users being able to “edit” tweets from others on the platform.



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Jeff Bezos sees $20 BILLION wiped off fortune in a matter of hours

Amazon founder and chairman Jeff Bezos has seen roughly $20 billion wiped off his net worth, as the company’s stock heads for its worst day on the markets in eight years. 

Shares of Amazon were down 12.6 percent at noon on Friday, to $2,527.64, after the company announced its first quarterly loss since 2015, and slowing sales growth for the first time in 21 years.

Bezos owns an 11.1 percent stake in the company, and the vast majority of his fortune consists of Amazon stock, meaning the billionaire suffered huge losses on paper as the shares tanked.

At the close of markets on Thursday, Bezos was worth about $169 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, and his $20 billion wipeout on Friday represented about a 12 percent decline in his fortunes.

Amazon founder and chairman Jeff Bezos has seen roughly $20 billion wiped off his net worth, as the company’s stock heads for its worst day on the markets in eight years

Shares of Amazon were down 12.59 percent at noon on Friday, to $2,527.64, after the company announced its first quarterly loss since 2015

Including Friday’s losses, Bezos has lost about $40 billion from his net worth since the beginning of the year — but he remains the second wealthiest person in the world, after Elon Musk.  

The losses suffered by Bezos are on paper only, meaning that they could be reversed if Amazon’s stock price rises again before he sells his shares. 

The plunge in Amazon’s share price pushed the Nasdaq toward sharp monthly declines on Friday, and US markets looked set to end March with their worst monthly performance since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

On Thursday, Amazon stunned Wall Street by reporting a loss of $3.84 billion, or $7.56 a share, for the first three months of the year. A year ago, it reported a profit of $8.1 billion, or $15.79 a share, for the first quarter. 

The ocean of red ink in Amazon’s report came mostly from the company’s accounting for a $7.6 billion loss in value of its stock investment in Rivian Automotive.

However, Amazon’s e-commerce business also reported an operating loss of $1.57 billion in North America and $1.28 billion internationally. 

Amazon has spent billions on new warehouses to meet growing demand, but some analysts warn that it may have expanded too much, too soon

Government data shows that online retail spending declined in February and March, and Amazon is now struggling to contain costs after an explosive period of growth during the pandemic.

Amazon has had to raise wages to attract workers, nearly doubling its workforce since 2020, and is currently battling a unionization effort in New York that could send labor costs even higher.

The company has also spent billions on new warehouses to meet growing demand, but some analysts warn that it may have expanded too much, too soon.

As well, higher fuel prices are eating into consumers’ disposable income while making delivery more expensive for Amazon. 

Like many others, Amazon is dealing with pressure from inflation and supply-chain issues. 

Inflation-related expenses added roughly $2 billion of incremental costs when compared to last year, Amazon’s Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky said, adding that the company also incurred another $4 billion in costs related to productivity loss and other inefficiencies.

Amazon has been battling an attempt to unionize at its Staten Island warehouse, where organizers are seen demonstrating on Monday above

‘The pandemic and subsequent war in Ukraine have brought unusual growth and challenges,’ said Amazon CEO Andy Jassy in a statement. 

‘Our teams are squarely focused on improving productivity and cost efficiencies throughout our fulfillment network. We know how to do this and have done it before.’

To offset rising fuel costs and inflation, the retail giant has added a 5 percent surcharge to fees it charges third-party sellers who use its fulfillment services. 

Last quarter, Amazon also hiked its annual Prime membership fee by $20 to $139 annually, its first rate hike since 2018. 

Despite the fee hike, Olsavsky said millions of new Prime members have enrolled during the quarter.

‘Given the pace at which the business grew over the past few years this shift is hardly surprising,’ Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData Retail, told Reuters. 

‘It represents more of a post pandemic reset than catastrophic failure. Nevertheless, the slowdown raises important questions over how Amazon can restore momentum and regain its leadership position as one of the primary drivers of online growth.’ 

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