Getty Image / Drew Angerer / Staff
Amazon’s first-quarter profit more than doubled from a year ago and exceeded expectations of Wall Street analysts. Amazon’s overall sales jumped to $51 billion, which is a 43% increase over last year. Amazon saw a net income was $1.63 billion or $3.27 per share for the first quarter of 2018, nearly triple what analysts expected ($1.24). By Thursday, Jeff Bezos had made over $12 billion because of the outstanding Q1 2018 financial results of Amazon.
After surpassing Wall Street’s predictions, the Amazon Inc. founder added a whopping $12 billion to his already vast fortune. Amazon shares climbed to $1,614 in extended trading, bloating the Amazon CEO’s net worth to $134 billion. Bezos continues to sit on the throne of the richest person in the world outpacing Microsoft’s Bill Gates.
The impressive growth is fueled by the company’s cloud utility called Amazon Web Services, the success of their Alexa-based electronics such as the Echo, and of course online shopping. Amazon also announced that they are raising the price of their Prime membership, but there’s a way you can still get the service for the old price of $99. By hiking the price of Prime memberships, it could mean a $2 billion incerase in revenue for Amazon.
You may remember that Bezos has been making a steady habit of collecting mind-blowing one-day paydays because of Amazon outperforming expectations. Six months ago, the Amazon boss earned $6 billion overnight. After a record Black Friday Bezos made $2.4 billion and three months ago Bezos gained a windfall of $7 billion in one day. It’s good to be Jeff Bezos.