Amazon CEO Andrew Jassy.
F. Carter Smith/Bloomberg
Talk about having a nice Day One.
Monday marked the first day on the job for new Amazon.com CEO Andy Jassy, who succeeded founder Jeff Bezos on the 27th anniversary of the founding of the company. Jassy, who has been with Amazon.com (ticker: AMZN) for 24 years, has been running the company’s Amazon Web Services business. Bezos remains the company’s executive chairman, largest shareholder, and astronaut-in-chief.
In recent trading, Amazon shares have spiked 3.7%, at $3,641.22, setting a new intraday high. If the gains hold, it would be the first new closing high for Amazon since September 2020. The stock is up about 12% year to date, lagging the 15% return on the S&P 500. Amazon shares have rallied about 19% over the past 52 weeks. According to Dow Jones Market Data, the stock this morning is the best-performing stock in both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq 100.
As Barron’s noted in the Tech Trader column over the weekend, Jassy comes to the job as Amazon is seeing additional antitrust scrutiny—and sparkling financial performance. In the first quarter, sales grew 44% from a year earlier, the fastest quarterly growth since 2011. With demand surging, Amazon hired more than 500,000 people in 2020, boosting total staff to more than 1.3 million.
Amazon shares’ jump on Tuesday have given a $65 billion boost to the company’s market cap—talk about a major vote of confidence. Amazon now has a valuation of $1.8 trillion, trailing only Apple (AAPL) and Microsoft (MSFT) in size among U.S.-listed companies.
Write to Eric J. Savitz at [email protected]
