Ten years ago, Amazon, which opens the development center in Bucharest this week, had less than 20,000 employees, and revenues were ten times lower than now. Few companies have grown so strongly in such a short time, and the company led by Jeff Bezos was worth 120 billion in 2013, while now the market capitalization is six times higher. CEO Jeff Bezos is one of the smartest people in the business, but he has often had clichés with investors about development plans that have affected the company’s profitability for many years.
Amazon’s market capitalization has exceeded $ 770 billion and the growth has been staggering in recent years. For example, in May 2013 it was under $ 120 billion and in June 2015 it exceeded $ 200 billion for the first time. The 300 billion threshold was exceeded in November 2015, and the 400 billion threshold in February 2017. Four months later, the value of $ 500 billion was exceeded, and in January 2018 the company crossed the threshold of $ 600 billion.
The worst quarter was Q3 2014 with a net loss of $ 437 million, and in Q2 2015 the net loss was $ 124 million. Last quarter brought a record profit of $ 1.6 billion, and the highest turnover was in the last quarter of 2017: $ 60.5 billion.
Some key facts from Amazon’s history
1995: The online retailer Amazon, which sold books, is launched in July
1997: Listed on the NASDAQ, with a capitalization of $ 438 million
1998 The company begins selling CDs and DVDs. A year later he added electronics and toys
2000: The Marketplace is launched
2002: The Amazon Web Services cloud platform is launched
2003: The sale of jewelry begins, a year later the shoes are added
2005: Amazon Prime is launched in the US and now has over 100 million members
2007: Kindle e-book launched
2011: Kindle Fire tablet released
2013: In December, the company announced for the first time the drone delivery plans. The first delivery is made in December 2016.
2014: The Echo smart speaker is launched, with the famous assistant Alexa
2015: Amazon launched its first physical store, a bookstore in Seattle
2017: The company buys Whole Foods for $ 13.7 billion.
2018: Amazon opens the first store where you don’t have to stop at home to pay, everything being automatic.
Amazon has also had failures, such as the Fire smartphone, but also huge successes that bring high profits (for example the Amazon Web Services division).
Net profit (millions of dollars)
Jeff Bezos was also famous for irritating investors with his large investment budget, which affected the company’s profitability. But after 2015, the results were seen and the American giant set new records in terms of profit.
Amazing was the increase in the number of employees in the last five years and especially in 2017 when the company employed 130,000 people and added the approximately 90,000 employees of Whole Foods, a company taken over last year.
Number of Employees
Amazon opens this week the development center in Bucharest, where recruitment started a few months ago and the number of employees should exceed 1,000.
The company has 50,000 employees in Europe, where it has not reached US market share.
