Amazon stock is soaring Friday morning after crushing earnings expectations and disclosing that it now employs more than 540,000 people worldwide.
Amazon stock spiked in after-hours trading following the earnings report. The positive momentum continued Friday morning, with shares climbing another 13 percent and nearing the $1,100 mark.
Amazon’s stock gains pushed Jeff Bezos back to the title of the world’s richest person, passing Bill Gates, according to a report from Bloomberg. Bezos briefly passed Gates over the summer before dropping back to the second position.
Amazon’s stock gains added close to $7.8 billion to Bezos’ net worth in a single day, according to Bloomberg. Bezos owns a 17 percent stake in Amazon, in addition to his Blue Origin holdings and stake in the Washington Post.
Amazon has seen its stock price spike close to 47 percent since the beginning of the year. Amazon’s market value tops $500 billion, joining Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and Google parent Alphabet as the only publicly traded companies above that mark.
Amazon’s cloud business has been a big driver behind the company’s ascension, and that trend held in the most recent quarter. Amazon Web Services once again kept Amazon out of the red during the quarter, contributing $1 billion in operating profit to the overall corporation.
