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The world’s largest online retailer, Amazon, is making a change at its peak.
Founded about 27 years ago Jeff Bezos an online bookstore in a garage near Seattle. Out of his fascination with the Internet and great vision, emerged one of the world’s most valuable corporations: Amazon. After more than a quarter-century, the world’s largest online retailer is now initiating the change in its top management: Bezos will hand over the presidency to Andy Jassy, the head of the burgeoning cloud business, in the third quarter. from 2021.. An era doesn’t end there, Bezos wants to keep getting involved. Amazon’s 2020 annual report, released Tuesday after the US stock market closed, became a minor matter in light of the large staff.
As CEO of the board of directors, who is superior to the board of directors, Bezos is likely to continue to exert a lot of influence at Amazon going forward. In a memo to employees, the 57-year-old stated that his decision was not about retiring. “I’ve never had more energy,” Bezos said. In your future role as Chairman of the Board of Directors, you want to focus your energy and attention on new products and initiatives. He also buys more time for other projects like his foundations, his space company Blue Origin or the newspaper “The Washington Post”, which is privately owned.
On July 5, 1994, Jeff and his then-wife MacKenzie Bezos founded an online bookstore in Bellevue, near Seattle. The company was initially called Cadabra, but was quickly renamed Amazon. According to Bezos’s 2013 biography “The Seller of Everything,” Cadabra sounded too much like a corpse. What started with books grew into the world’s largest Internet department store. Today, Amazon is much more than that, keeping countless companies running with its cloud services, offering IT applications for start-ups and online storage space. With Whole Foods, Amazon also operates its own supermarket chain in the United States.
But that’s not all: in the streaming business, Amazon is trying to compete with the market leader Netflix with its Prime service; With the establishment of its own delivery logistics, the group uses parcel companies such as UPS (United Parcel Service), FedEx and DHL Negative pressure And no one really knows which industries Amazon will promote next. Bezos made the success of his company as a majority shareholder incredibly rich. With an estimated fortune of 188 billion dollars (155.4 billion euros), he is currently the second richest person in the world behind the head of Tesla according to the “Bloomberg Billionaires Index.” Elon musk.
The rapidly expanding Bezos group was long in the stock market due to chronic red numbers, but because Bezos has been reliably turning a profit, he has become a Wall Street darling. In September 2018, Amazon became the second public company after iPhone giant Apple to break the magic mark of a trillion dollars in market value. Since then, things have continued to improve – Amazon’s market cap was last at a whopping $ 1.7 trillion. News of Bezos’s resignation didn’t surprise investors Tuesday night either: The stock remained in positive territory in after-hours trading.
Because business was brilliant last quarter as well: In the three months to the end of December, Amazon topped the $ 100 billion mark for the first time thanks to an order boom in the Corona crisis and a solid Christmas business. Compared to the same period last year, sales increased 44 percent to $ 125.6 billion. Amazon could more than double its net profit at $ 7.2 billion (€ 6 billion). In fiscal 2020, the company earned $ 21.3 billion, an increase of 84 percent and a new record.
Meanwhile, Amazon’s biggest profit driver is not online commerce, but cloud business with IT services and internet storage space. In this sense, it is logical that Andy Jassy, the head of this division, has been promoted to future CEO. The Amazon AWS cloud platform, which is used by many businesses and applications, increased quarterly revenue by 28 percent, $ 12.7 billion. Despite strong growth, the business remained somewhat below expectations. Operating profit increased 37 percent to $ 3.6 billion, clearly showing how attractive profit-maker Amazon’s cloud flagship continues to be.
Through his success with Amazon, Bezos hasn’t just made friends. The group is accused of destroying the retail sector with its great market power and low prices. There are also frequent criticisms of Amazon due to controversial working conditions. Bezos’ most powerful enemy, however, was still in the White House until recently: the former president of the United States. Donald trump and he was bound by a long-term bitter dispute. The main reason was not so much the business, but Trump’s dislike of the Washington Post, which often reports critically on him.
JPMorgan raises target for Amazon
US bank JPMorgan has raised Amazon’s price target based on figures from US $ 4,155 to US $ 4,400 and left the rating “Overweight”. Analyst Douglas Anmuth spoke in a study available Wednesday about an excellent fourth quarter for the online retailer. In the change at the top of the group from Jeff Bezos to former AWS division board member Andy Jassy, he sees a buying opportunity.
On Tuesday, Amazon’s share of the NASDAQ rose 0.27 percent after hours to $ 3,389.10.
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Bildquelle: Paul Morigi / Getty Images, Marvin Joseph / The Washington Post via Getty Images
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