By Andy PizderThe Wall Street Journal – December 20, 2017 09:00:56Amazon.com Inc. A $5,626.4 billion bet on the stock of Amazon.com INC, or AMZN, has helped propel the stock’s soaring value and could help push Amazon’s revenue to more than $9 billion in 2018, a Wall Street analyst said on Friday.
Amazon.co.uk has more than quadrupled in value since Puzders arrival as CEO in July.
Its stock price is now more than 50 percent higher than it was a year ago, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Amazon has more shares than any other U.S. company and its stock is up more than 400 percent this year.
Puzder, the former chief executive of the Chicago-based food delivery service Papa John’s Corp., took over as CEO on Sept. 10, one day after President Donald Trump fired his chief of staff, Reince Priebus, over the controversy over whether Trump was behind the firing.
Pozder, who has held the role for more than a year, has focused on improving customer service and increasing productivity.
He has pushed to streamline the Amazon.co, Amazon.de and Amazon.tv business lines.
In the first six months of 2018, Amazon, which had about $2.7 trillion in sales, made $1.8 billion from its Amazon.ca and Amazon Web Services businesses.
Amazon.to, the business from which Amazon.io is a competitor, made about $1 billion last year, up about 80 percent from the same period in 2017.
Pazares new job could boost the companyIn his new job, Puzds role as VP of e-commerce at Amazon will boost Amazon’s sales and profits.
In addition, Amazon will benefit from Puzs ability to drive sales at its online stores, including through partnerships with the Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Best Buy Co., a major U.K. retailer.
Amazon’s stock has surged about 40 percent this month after Puzdar announced his departure from the company.
Its shares have gained more than 30 percent this quarter and have more than tripled since he became CEO.
Amazon shares fell 1.5 percent to $64.40 on Friday after Pizders hiring, but rose 1.7 percent to close at $68.24.
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of The Big Short, Pizdor, whose book was based on his reporting, is a popular choice for high-profile posts in the corporate world.
He is a longtime critic of Wall Street, including of its management style.
He was also named by former president Barack Obama to the National Commission on Corporate Governance.
Amazon has long sought to improve its image.
In 2018, Pazares leadership helped the company change its image as a company that does not make money from selling goods or services.
That change, he said, is what has made Amazon such a valuable business.
Amazon also has invested heavily in cloud computing, the use of servers to store data for customers.
Its cloud services have expanded rapidly in recent years, with sales of its popular cloud-based video service now more then triple from a year earlier.
