Jeff Bezos has once again become the world’s richest person after Amazon stocks rose more than 13 percent on strong third-quarter earnings.
At the end of trading Thursday, Bill Gates held the top spot on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index with $88 billion, but when Amazon released its third-quarter earnings report Friday morning, stocks surged 13.5 percent during the morning hours, CNN Money reported.
Bezos was worth $83 billion yesterday, but his 80 million shares of Amazon stock rose $10 billion on the strong earnings, catapulting him over Gates to take the top spot, CNN reported. Microsoft stock also rose 7 percent, but the $600 million Gates earned from his Microsoft shares due to the jump wasn’t enough to keep him No. 1.
Amazon earned 34 percent more revenue in the third quarter than last year, or $11 billion more, CBS Moneywatch reported. During the quarter, Amazon saw a record-breaking Prime Day promotion and more companies wanting its internet cloud services.
The giant ecommerce retailer now accounts for about a third of all e-commerce transactions and has bought Whole Foods, a major health food retailer, to bolster its grocery offerings, Moneywatch reported.
Amazon stock is up 47 percent this year—one of only four publicly traded companies whose shares go for more than $1,000 apiece, Moneywatch reported.
Bezos briefly attained the top spot as richest person in July, but it lasted less than a day before Amazon’s stock price slipped back down and Gates once again took over the top spot. As of the end of trading Friday, however, Amazon stock had only given up about one quarter of 1 percent of its gain and ended the day up 13.22 percent, allowing Bezos to retain the top spot at least until Monday when trading opens again, Google Finance reported.
Amazon’s single-day increase on Friday added a total of more than $61 million in value, which is more than the market value of 420 companies in the S&P 500, CNBC reported.
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