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Jeff Bezos: ‘We are inspired by all the essential workers we see doing their jobs — nurses and doctors, grocery store cashiers, police officers, and our own extraordinary frontline employees’
Amazon.com Inc. unsurprisingly topped expectations for quarterly sales amid the COVID-19 pandemic, but it was comments from CEO Jeff Bezos, in a written statement accompanying the retailer’s earnings report, that really drew the focus on Wall Street Thursday evening.
‘If you’re a shareowner in Amazon, you may want to take a seat, because we’re not thinking small.’ — Jeff Bezos
The remarks constituted arguably the lengthiest such statement from the world’s richest man in a quarterly report and underscored the magnitude of the deadly disease that has left much of the world struggling to emerge from forced business shutdowns and a temporary cessation of normalcy to help limit the contagion’s spread.
In that environment, Amazon AMZN, +4.26% has prospered, serving as the go-to online delivery service, one that had previously managed to crush competitors through the sheer might of a $1.2 trillion behemoth. Some rivals, indeed, have buckled under the strain of the current environment even as Amazon’s shares have soared 34% so far in 2020.
However, Bezos shied away from how decisively the cloud-computing and consumer-services company has distanced itself from competitors, including long-established retailers like Macy’s M, -3.46% and J.C. Penney Co. Inc. JCP, -2.30%, who find themselves on the ropes. Instead, the Amazon boss focused on the road ahead.
Bezos’s statement highlights the costs that companies that survive this public health crisis will face in the coming weeks, months and years as they take steps to ensure the safety of workers and customers alike.
“We are inspired by all the essential workers we see doing their jobs — nurses and doctors, grocery store cashiers, police officers, and our own extraordinary frontline employees,” he wrote.
“The service we provide has never been more critical, and the people doing the frontline work — our employees and all the contractors throughout our supply chain — are counting on us to keep them safe as they do that work,” wrote Bezos. “We’re not going to let them down,”
Amazon reported $75 billion in sales in the first quarter, but its profit declined.
Amazon’s expected expenditures going forward also could deliver a hit to the company in the coming quarters. Shares of Amazon were down 5.5% in after-hours trades following gains during Thursday’s regular trading session.
The company’s stock has climbed 34% so far this year, a remarkable feat for the first three months of any year but one that comes with the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -1.17%, the S&P 500 index SPX, -0.92% down 15% and 10%, respectively, in 2020. The Nasdaq Composite Index COMP, -0.28% is off just 0.9%.
As Wall Street has been split into haves and have-nots amid the coronavirus pandemic, Amazon has only strengthened its position among the former.
Bezos’s fortune, meanwhile, has surged by more than $24 billion since the pandemic took the broader market for a roller-coaster ride, according to Fortune. That rise has lifted his net worth to a stunning $148.6 billion, according to Forbes, making him by far the richest person in the world, even after relinquishing much of his wealth to his partner in divorce proceedings back in July.
Credit: Wall Street
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