Jeff Bezos Steps Down as Amazon’s CEO After 27 Years
Yahoo Finance's Dan Howley takes a look at the legacy left behind by Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos as he approaches his last day before stepping down on July 5, 2021.
DAN HOWLEY: On July 5, Jeff Bezos, the richest person on Earth, will officially step down as CEO of the company he founded in 1994. Amazon will continue to exist, of course. It's one of the wealthiest publicly traded companies in the world with a market capitalization of $1.7 trillion. But Bezos' decision to leave the post nevertheless marks a new era for the e-commerce giant.
Amazon initially started as an online bookstore before spreading its tendrils to different retail offerings. It went public in 1997 at $18 a share. But even after expanding its sales to other categories, the company didn't post a quarterly profit until Q4 2002. In 2005, Amazon launched its successful Prime service, which now boasts a whopping 200 million subscribers.
But it was Amazon Web Services that shot Amazon's valuation into the stratosphere. Launched in 2006, AWS is now more profitable than the core Amazon business, with the cloud platform bringing in $13.53 billion in net income in 2020, compared to the e-commerce side's $9.36 billion.
