It Grows

Evil had a great holiday season: Amazon now has over 150 million Prime subscribers, the company announced in Q4 2019 numbers released on Thursday. The massive growth numbers sent the company’s market cap surging to over $1 trillion (£761 billion) and made CEO Jeff Bezos an estimated $13.2 billion (£9 billion) in a matter of minutes.

Over 150 million is a significant uptick from Amazon’s April 2018 disclosure of over 100 million members. The e-commerce giant credited its swelling subscription numbers in large part to Brazil, where it started operations in September 2018, as well as efforts to cut two-day delivery times in half during the busy holiday season and free Amazon Fresh grocery delivery for Prime members. Amazon Web Services also saw massive revenue jumps, growing from $7.43 billion (£5.6 billion) in net sales in Q4 2018 to $9.95 billion (£7.5 billion) in Q4 2019. Its “Other” category generated $4.8 billion (£3.6 billion) in revenue during the quarter, which is about 41 per cent up from Q4 2018.

All told, Amazon booked over $3.3 billion (£2.5 billion) in profit on record quarterly sales of $87.4 billion (£66 billion). According to MarketWatch, shares jumped 12 per cent in after-hours trading, leaving Bezos with an estimated net wealth of $129.5 billion (£98 billion). Amazon expects evil to keep paying off, with first-quarter sales projected to grow by 16 to 22 per cent, or $69 billion (£52 billion) to $73 billion (£55.5 billion).

Featured image: Ina Fassbender/AFP (Getty Images)