Amazon founder Jeff Bezos announced on the 2nd (local time) that he would withdraw from the position of CEO at the end of the first half of this year.
Amazon announced the plan as a surprise by revealing its fourth quarter results on the same day. Amazon announced that Bezos will be the Executive Chair from the third quarter, and Amazon Web Services (AWS) CEO Andy Jassy will take over as Amazon CEO.
Jeff Bezos’s personal change was completely unexpected by the market. Bezos said Amazon is stepping down as CEO because it has reached its most innovative period.
“If you do things right, the new things become commonplace after years of amazing innovation,” said Bezos. “Yawning at this time is the best compliment an innovator can get.” “If you look at Amazon’s financial performance, you can see that it’s a cumulative result of innovation over a long period of time,” he said. “Amazon is the most innovative situation right now, so I think this is the best time to change the CEO,” he said.
Amazon has not yet revealed the exact role of the Executive Chair that Bezos will assume. However, it seems that it does not seem to be completely releasing its hands from management, as it is a modifier attached to executives who participate in management,’executive.
Bezos is reportedly more focused on other new businesses than Amazon. It is expected that other innovations will be pursued in fields other than e-commerce through the `Day 1 Fund`, `Bazos Earth Fund`, `Blue Origin` and `The Washington Post`.
Andy Jesse’s next Amazon CEO joined Amazon in 1997 as Marketing Manager. Founded Amazon Web Services (AWS) in 2003. Since April 2016, he has been the AWS CEO. After undergraduate at Harvard University, he received an MBA from Harvard University.
Amazon made a second leap forward as the e-commerce market grew dramatically due to the Corona 19 incident last year.
In the fourth quarter of last year, the company announced that its sales increased by 44% compared to the same period of the previous year to $125.6 billion. This is the first time that Amazon has exceeded $100 billion in quarterly performance.
Operating profit was $6.9 billion, up 77% year-on-year. The operating margin was 5.5%.
Net profit reached $7.2 billion, an increase of 118% compared to the same period last year.
Based on these fourth-quarter results, Amazon was writing a record growth last year. Last year’s annual sales increased 38% year-on-year to $386.1 billion. Operating profit was $22.9 billion, an increase of 58% from the previous year. Net profit recorded 21.3 billion dollars, an increase of 84% from the previous year.
On this day, the New York Stock Market ended trading with all three indexes rising as the game stop situation subsided.
The Dow and S&P 500 indexes rose 1.57% and 1.39%, respectively. The Nasdaq index rose 1.56%. GameStop shares began to decline sharply from the opening of the day and closed at $90.00, down 60.01%. It is the appearance of the weakening of cohesion, as individuals are making some gains. AMC Entertainment closed the deal at $7.82, down 41.29%.
Amazon closed the deal at $3380, up 1.11% on that day. Immediately after the close of the market, earnings and plans for CEO replacement were disclosed, and after-hours transactions are rising by about 1%. Alphabet (A shares), Google’s parent company, ended at $1919.12, up 1.38% on the same day, and it is rising by about 6% in after-hours trading with Google’s outperforming market forecast.
Alphabet recorded sales of $56.9 billion in the fourth quarter, higher than the market forecast ($51.3 billion). Google announced the first separate cloud business operating profit on that day. Google said it lost $5.61 billion in its cloud business last year. This contrasted with Amazon’s $13.53 billion in profits from its cloud business.
[뉴욕 = 박용범 특파원]
[ⓒ 매일경제 & mk.co.kr, 무단전재 및 재배포 금지]