Jeff Bezos Says Amazon Will Spend $4 Billion USD on COVID-19 Expenses
“If you’re a shareowner in Amazon, you may want to take a seat.”
Amazon boss Jeff Bezos has said that he expects to spend $4 billion USD in Q2 in response to the coronavirus pandemic and its demands, making sure that the company is “getting products to customers and keeping employees safe.”
The tech company had a very strong first quarter with sales hitting over $75 billion USD. In the same period, Jeff Bezos’ net worth grew by $24 billion USD, the company hired an extra 100,000 members of staff, and it experienced incredibly high demand in areas such as Amazon Fresh.
As a result, Bezos has noted that “under normal circumstances, in this coming Q2, we’d expect to make some $4 billion USD or more in operating profit. But these aren’t normal circumstances. Instead, we expect to spend the entirety of that $4 billion USD, and perhaps a bit more, on COVID-related expenses.”
According to FactSet, analysts predicted Q2 operation profits of more than $4 billion USD, but given the circumstances, Amazon expects to spend “hundreds of millions of dollars” on supporting its front-line workers, as well as providing personal protective equipment to its hundreds of thousands of staff members. It also expects to spend more on “enhanced cleaning” of its facilities and aims to provide “higher wages for hourly teams.”
Bezos rounded out his words with the statement, “if you’re a shareowner in Amazon, you may want to take a seat, because we’re not thinking small.”
In other news, Apple reported a strong Q1 2020 revenue of $58.3 billion USD
