When Covid-19 shut down the U.S. economy, Amazon's stock price fell back to where it was before.
The e-retailer's shares fell to their lowest level in more than a year.
Escalating inflation, a worsening economy and rising interest rates have caused Amazon to fall sharply this year. For the first time in almost two decades, the tech-laden Nasdaq is set to lose to the S&P 500. The value of tech stocks has been wiped out.
Since the dot-com crash of 2000, when the company lost 80% of its value, the shares of Amazon have plummeted. Meta has had the worst year of all the high-valued tech companies.
It is a reversal of the stock price rally in 2020. Amazon saw a rush of orders from consumers at the height of the Pandemic, as many avoided trips to physical stores and instead turned to the web for essential and non- essential goods.
The story began to change last year as the economy started to recover and many people returned to physical stores. Increased costs due to inflation, supply chain constraints and the war in Ukraine put additional pressure on Amazon and other tech companies.
The challenges are going deeper for Amazon. The company has had to scale back due to slowing growth in its core retail business.
Amazon back to pre-pandemic levelsAndy Jassy, the company's CEO, has embarked on a wide-ranging review of the company's expenses, resulting in some programs being shuttered and a hiring freeze. As part of a wave of job cuts, the company began laying off thousands of employees last month.
The pain isn't going to go away soon Amazon spooked investors in October when it projected sales between $140 billion and 148 billion for the current quarter, which would represent growth of just 2% to 8%. According to Refinitiv, that was well below the average forecast.
Andy Jassy is the CEO of Amazon.
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