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Bezos Pads Fortune by $12 Billion in a Day as Amazon Sales Surge

Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest person, got a lot richer Thursday.

Bezos Pads Fortune by $12 Billion in a Day as Amazon Sales Surge
Jeff Bezos, chief executive officer of Amazon.com Inc. and founder of Blue Origin LLC. (Photographer: Peter Foley/Bloomberg)

(Bloomberg) -- Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest person, got a lot richer Thursday.

The Amazon.com Inc. founder added $12 billion to his fortune as the company’s shares surged 6.3 percent to $1,614 in extended trading at 4:33 p.m. in New York -- on top of a 4 percent gain during the regular session -- after the retailer reported results that beat Wall Street estimates. That lifted Bezos’s net worth to to $134 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Bezos Pads Fortune by $12 Billion in a Day as Amazon Sales Surge

It has been a turbulent week for the richest Americans in tech. On Tuesday, Alphabet Inc. spooked investors after first-quarter results sparked concern that the Google parent plans to go on a spending binge, punishing shares of Amazon, Facebook Inc. and Netflix Inc. Bezos lost $4.6 billion that day, and Alphabet’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin each lost $2 billion.

Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, whose fortune dropped $2.5 billion on Tuesday, got a reprieve Thursday as his wealth increased by $5.8 billion, a day after the social network posted better-than-expected results for the first quarter. He leapfrogged Spain’s Amancio Ortega to No. 5 in the global wealth ranking.

To contact the reporters on this story: Tom Metcalf in New York at tmetcalf7@bloomberg.net, Jack Witzig in Princeton at jwitzig@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Pierre Paulden at ppaulden@bloomberg.net, Peter Eichenbaum, Steven Crabill

©2018 Bloomberg L.P.