Jeff Bezos On Brink Of $23 Billion Wealth Drop, Among Worst On Record

Jeff Bezos is set to see as much as $23 billion erased from his fortune after Amazon.com Inc. projected sluggish sales for the holiday shopping season, sending shares plunging in after-hours trading.

The stock fell as much as 21% after the market closed Thursday. If that drop carries into Friday's session, the Amazon founder's wipeout would be the fifth-largest one-day decline in wealth on record, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Should the move hold, Bezos, 58, would be worth about $111 billion, according to the Bloomberg wealth index, about half as much as his $214 billion peak in July 2021. His wealth tumbled by more than $58 billion this year as of Thursday's close as a broader slump in technology stocks has weighed on Amazon.

Of the world's richest individuals tracked by the index, only Mark Zuckerberg, Changpeng Zhao and Elon Musk have taken a larger hit, though that could change by week's end.

The world's largest retailer's forecast for the final quarter of the year fell far short of analysts' estimates, and Amazon expects the effects of inflation, rising fuel costs and weaker demand to persist. The online retailer has also been reeling from the customer pullback from e-commerce as shoppers return to their pre-pandemic habits.

The company's stock is down about 33% this year through Thursday's close. Bezos holds about 996 million shares in Amazon, according to an August filing.

MacKenzie Scott, who separated from Bezos in 2019, is set to lose $7 billion from her net worth, which was $26.8 billion as of Thursday's close. She holds more than 293 million shares of Amazon, based on an analysis of the company's 2022 proxy statement.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)