NEW YORK (Dispatches) - The net worth of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos dropped by $13.5bn after the company reported earnings that were below the expectations of analysts.
The drop removed 80 per cent of the increase to Bezos net worth this year, Bloomberg reported. The huge drop is equal to 58 per cent of Nasa’s budget for 2021.
It is Amazon’s second-quarter results that have done damage to Bezos’s wealth. The after-market results on Thursday didn’t meet Wall Street’s expectations and possibly signalled the beginning of the end of the sales increase for the online retail giant fuelled by the pandemic when consumers relied on the company to avoid going to stores.
The online retailer posted revenues of over $100bn for the third quarter in a row on Thursday, which still wasn’t good enough to avoid the stock price dive.
Amazon’s share price plunged 7.2 per cent to around $3,340 on Friday, pulling down the wealth of its founder and former CEO with it, to an estimated $196.6bn, from a starting point of around $207bn.
Bezos is still classified as the world’s richest person following the drop, about $8bn ahead of Tesla founder Elon Musk.