A third-quarter earnings report from Amazon.com Inc. this week propelled founder Jeff Bezos' net worth to $55 billion, making him the third-richest man in the United States.
Bezos leaped over billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index after Amazon reported a 23-percent rise in net sales for the third quarter, generating a spike in the company's stock prices. Shares in Amazon leaped 10 percent in after-hours trading and broke the $600-per-share barrier for the first time on Friday.
According to MarketWatch, some analysts are projecting the share prices of Amazon to hit the $700 to $800 mark. No matter what the shares do on Friday, Bezos has already benefited from the surprising third-quarter report.
"Before Thursday’s surge, Bezos’s fortune had jumped 77 percent in 2015 as investors have cheered profits at Amazon and
growth in its cloud segment," Bloomberg reported. "The $22 billion year-to-date increase is the most of anyone on the index and more than the combined gains of Facebook Inc.’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin."
Wedbush analysts projected a $700 price for Amazon stock, and called the company "the dominant global retailer," MarketWatch said. They forecast a continuing bright future for the company. "We envision that Amazon can grow revenues by $15 billion annually for the foreseeable future, and expect it to double in size within six years," the analysts wrote.
The good news Friday on Amazon stock drifted over to other tech stocks as well.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Facebook broke the $100 per share price for the first time, and Microsoft and Alphabet Inc., formerly Google, both saw rising stock prices.
"Based on their 10-percent premarket stock gains, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Amazon are poised to see their market caps climb by more $100 billion combined today and clear a collective $1.2 trillion, with Alphabet possibly getting to $500 billion for the first time," WSJ wrote Friday.
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