Amazon, the second $1trillion company
AMAZON yesterday became the second public company in history to be worth a trillion dollars, just weeks after rival apple hit the milestone.
The landmark moment came as shares in the internet shopping giant reached a record value of $2,050.27 each – about £1,595.
It was 116,000 per cent higher than when the company first listed on new York’s nasdaq stock exchange in 1997, following an extraordinary rise in which it has grown from an online bookseller into a global empire.
The company has transformed the way people shop, while making founder Jeff Bezos, 54, the richest man in modern history with a fortune of £130billion. But that rise has also led to criticism of its devastating impact on our high street shops, the amount of tax it pays and the conditions staff in its vast warehouses work under.
Mr Bezos started amazon in the garage of his Seattle home 24 years ago after leaving his job at a Wall Street hedge fund.
The father-of-four picked the company’s name because it began with ‘a’ and invoked the world’s largest river – a symbol of his dream to make amazon.com the biggest retailer. He offered to deliver any book to any reader anywhere, with the first – Fluid Concepts and Creative analogies by Douglas Hofstadter – sold to computer scientist John Wainwright on april 3, 1995.
Despite his ambition, Mr Bezos is said to have warned early investors – including his parents – that the company was likely to go bankrupt. Three years later, however, he took amazon public and began rapidly expanding the range of products.
During this time, critics branded it ‘amazon.bomb’ and the company did not make its first profit until the end of 2001. Mr Bezos dismissed the attacks, insisting the firm needed to ‘get big, fast’,
Since 1997, its annual sales have grown from £115million to £138billion. amazon’s achievement in reaching a trillion- dollar valuation was all the more impressive because of its speed. apple took almost 38 years to reach the milestone – amazon arrived there in 21.
neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData Retail, told the BBC: ‘To reach a market capitalisation of over $1trillion is impressive. To do it in a little over 24 years is extraordinary.
‘That amazon has achieved this demonstrates its dramatic advancement in the retail and technology sectors, as well as the influence it now wields over large parts of the consumer landscape.’