Who doesn’t enjoy a good stock chart?
America’s famed everything store is making waves yet again, as evidenced by Thursday’s big drop on the stock market. Don’t get me wrong, I love me a good stock chart just as much as the next guy, but there is a lot of this story that the charts aren’t telling you. Sorry chart nerds, if in fact you exist.
Not a good day for Bezos
Before November’s post-election meltdown, 2016 was shaping up to be a record year for Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. His fortune had grown by over $20 billion, bumping Warren Buffet down to the number three spot on Forbes 400 lists and making Bezos the second richest person in the United States; an achievement that was anything but spontaneous.
Amazon had been working hard to expand their services and industry penetration overseas by introducing a host of new services. From cloud based amenities offered through their new AWS platform to all original entertainment programming, and making moves to expand into the Indian market, Amazon’s push for growth was anything but subtle.
All well and good, but the increase in operating costs raised some eyebrows on Wall Street.
And when Amazon’s 2016 fourth quarter earnings report released on Thursday showed Amazon’s revenues at just over a billion dollars short of analyst estimates, their stock took a whopping 4.15% hit during after-hours trading.
This brought Bezos’ net worth down $2.8 billion in a single hour, making his $69.4 billion fortune now the fourth largest in the US.
All indicators point up
Luckily for Bezos, it’s not all gloom and doom on the economic front. Amazon’s 2016 stock gains outperformed the Zacks electronic commerce industry’s by 8.65% over the year, and though revenues did fall short of analyst estimates for 2016, there were up 27% from 2015’s $107 billion to $136 billion. This due in part to record holiday season sales led by devices such as the Amazon Echo, Echo Dot, Fire TV Stick, and Fire Tablet. Amazon Web Services also contributed to upward movement in stock price bringing in $3.5 billion in the fourth quarter alone, and with major league customers such as McDonald’s, Capital One and Salesforce, consumer confidence seems to be sky high.
Currently, Amazon stock is down 0.32% from previous close, but for a company that built an empire on its belief in innovation and forward thinking, it makes sense to expect more of that characteristic originative moxie to carry Amazon onward and upward.
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#Bezos
