Amazon supply chaos wipes billions off Bezos fortune

JEFF Bezos saw billions wiped off his fortune after Amazon shares tumbled in New York.

The tech company’s founder lost £6.5bn – though he is still worth £143bn – after the business blamed supply chain chaos for a sharp drop in sales growth in the third quarter of the year.

Bezos (pictured with girlfriend Lauren Sanchez) is now languishing far behind Elon Musk on the global rich list with the Tesla boss worth £210bn.

The electric car maker has seen demand increase in China, while it has also got to grips with production problems that had dogged it.

Tesla shares have soared 170pc over the last 12 months and were up 1.6pc last night.

Amazon sales rose by 15pc in the third quarter of the year to £80bn – a steep decline from the 27pc growth in the second quarter and the smallest increase since 2014.

Profits fell from £4.6bn to £2.3bn, the first drop for more than a year.

Amazon warned growth will slow steeply again in the crucial Christmas period and raised the prospect of its first quarterly loss since 2015.

It was the first set of quarterly results posted by Amazon in the company’s 27-year history without Bezos as its chief executive.

New boss Andy Jassy said the business is facing ‘several billion dollars of additional costs’ due to a cocktail of problems in its supply chain and surging inflation.

Investors have begun to get nervous over US tech stocks, with Apple also disappointing investors on Thursday by missing sales forecasts as it deals with a backlog of orders.

Apple shares fell another 4pc, giving the tech giant a market capitalisation of £1.8 trillion.

The fall in Apple shares means Microsoft has claimed the title of world’s most valuable public company. Microsoft has risen 45pc this year so far amid booming demand for its cloud computing services during the pandemic. Facebook is also going through a tough time of late and has renamed the company, Meta.

Russ Mould, AJ Bell director, said: ‘Thursday was a tumultuous night across the pond for the US technology sector as Amazon and Apple proved that, for all their resources, they’re not immune to global supply chain challenges and Facebook, or Meta, unveiled a controversial name change.

‘Whether this rebranding will be any more successful than Google’s switch to Alphabet back in 2015, which still requires explanation to people six years on, remains to be seen.’