Amazon posts record profits making Jeff Bezos even richer
Record profits for Amazon added billions to CEO Jeff Bezos’ world-leading worth.
Already ranked as the world’s richest man, surpassing Microsoft founder Bill Gates as his net worth surged to an estimated $105bn (£73bn) earlier this month, Mr Bezos saw his fortune increase further as Amazon reported its largest-ever profits.
The online retailer said it had pulled in nearly $2bn (£1.4bn) in the last quarter of 2017, capitalising on robust holiday sales.
The Seattle-based company posted revenue of $60.5bn (£42.4bn) and earnings of $3.75 (£2.6) per share, helping it to eclipse estimates for its fourth quarter figures.
That was up from $43.7bn (£30.6bn) revenue in the final quarter of 2016.
In a statement, Mr Bezos trumpeted the popularity of Amazon’s voice-activated personal assistant technology Alexa.
“Our 2017 projections for Alexa were very optimistic, and we far exceeded them,” he said. “We don’t see positive surprises of this magnitude very often — expect us to double down”.
In addition to pinning hopes on Alexa, Amazon has invested heavily in its cloud computing arm. That yielded strong results, with Amazon Web Service seeing its sales grow to $5.1bn (£3.6bn), a gain of 44 per cent compared the fourth quarter of 2016.
Its Prime shipping service also posted substantial numbers, with some five billion items shipping through the service over the course of 2017.
