Amazon became one of the first companies to lose $1 trillion. This week, Jeff Bezos' Everything Store became the first publicly traded company to lose $1 billion in market valuation.
The shocking figures, first reported by Bloomberg, are the result of a deteriorating economy, repeatedly dismal earnings reports and massive share price declines. Amazon, worth $1,882 trillion as of June 21, reported a comparatively paltry $878 billion valuation on Thursday. Microsoft, which narrowly overtook Apple as the world's most valuable company last year, wasn't far behind, with market valuation losses hovering around $900 billion. Combined, the share price declines from the two companies capture the impact of a lousy year that most want to soon forget.
These declines in stock price were not limited to Amazon and Microsoft. The five most valuable US tech companies reportedly lost a combined $4 trillion in value this year. To put it in perspective, this amount is greater than the combined GDP of Turkey, Argentina and Switzerland.
Amazon, in particular, disappointed investors last month after the company's revenue for the third quarter of 2022 fell short of expectations. The company also announced that it expects to see growth in the fourth quarter but only at a rate of 2-8%. That percentage is good for a normal company, but not at all normal for Amazon. Like many other companies, Amazon has also had to deal with declining e-commerce markets as consumers began to return to retail stores.
