A surge in Amazon.com Inc. shares Thursday morning in advance of the online retailer’s earnings report briefly propelled founder Jeff Bezos past Bill Gates as the world’s richest person.
Shares of the online retailer fell 0.7 percent to $1,046 at 4 p.m. in New York, after climbing as high as $1,083.31 four hours earlier, which gave Bezos a net worth of $92.3 billion. Gates had a net worth of $90.8 billion as of the Wednesday close.
Bezos remains ranked second on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, behind the Microsoft Corp. co-founder. Gates, 61, has held the top spot since May 2013.
Amazon’s second-quarter earnings per share of 40 cents missed the lowest analyst estimate. The median estimate was for $1.42.
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Bezos, 53, owns about 17 percent of Seattle-based Amazon, which had surged 40 percent this year through Wednesday, helping to add $24.5 billion to his net worth. He started 2017 as the world’s fourth-wealthiest person and has since surpassed Warren Buffett and Inditex SA founder Amancio Ortega, 81, who ranks third with $82.7 billion.
To contact the reporters on this story: Shelly Hagan in New York at shagan9@bloomberg.net, Spencer Soper in Seattle at ssoper@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Robert LaFranco at rlafranco@bloomberg.net, Jillian Ward at jward56@bloomberg.net, Peter Eichenbaum, David Scheer
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