What Next For Amazon ?
Yesterday, Jeff Bezos, The Chief Executive Officer, announced that he will be stepping down from his position as the CEO in the third quarter of the year and will be replaced by Andy Jassy, the head of the company’s cloud computing unit.
Jassy for years has been seen as a potential successor to Bezos. His likelihood of succeeding Bezos became last year when Jeff Wilke, who was the consumer business chief of Amazon and was also seen as a CEO candidate, announced he’d be leaving the company this year.
This transition comes at a time when Amazon seems unstoppable, fueled by record sales despite the pandemic and generating massive cash and profits from Amazon Web Services and the incoming CEO, who has been at Amazon since 1997, is likely to keep the company on this glorious path.
Mind you, Bezos stepping down as CEO does not amount to his exile from his star company, Amazon. Just as how Bill Gates remained chairman of Microsoft Corp. after ceding the CEO role, Jeff Bezos will take up the role of an Executive Chairman of Amazon.
Bezos’ role as an Executive Chair will afford him more time to focus on innovation- a contributing factor to Amazon’s growth- as well as his other interests which include ownership of Blue Origin (a space exploration company) and the Washington Post, and causes such as climate change.
Now down to how Bezos’ transition affected the market. The reaction on Wall Street was mostly positive, even as Amazon turned in another blockbuster earnings report. Its fourth-quarter sales jumped 44% to $125.6 billion, beating analysts’ average estimate of $119.7 billion. Earnings were $14.09 per share, compared with analyst projections of $7.34.
In establishing itself as an innovative company with amazing growth potentials, Amazon projected a revenue of $100 billion to $106 billion in the quarter ending in March, an operating income of $3 billion to $6.5 billion and analysts projected profit of $6.07 billion on sales of $95.72 billion.
Pretty awesome right?
All eyes are on Jassy now as he has some big shoes to fill. What do you think will happen to Amazon?
Do you think Jassy’s rise to CEO is probably bad news for companies like Oracle Corp, Microsoft and Google that compete with Amazon in cloud computing?
Feel free to share your thoughts in the comment section.
