Now Jeff Bezos has moved upstairs, what does the future hold for Amazon?

The company has boomed during the pandemic but appears to recognise that its public image needs work, particularly when it comes to the treatment of its employees. James Moore explains

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is handing over the role of Amazon CEO but will stay as executive chairman (AP)

One might have expected a least a wobble on Wall Street in response to the surprise news that Jeff Bezos, the iconic founder of Amazon, a man whose impact on the world is at least as profound as that of many a national leader, was stepping down as CEO.

Yet there was no sign of that. The stock, which has been a strong performer over the past few days, was ahead after market trading despite the apparent bombshell dropped by its leader.

That is not as surprising as it might look.

For a start, Bezos isn’t going far. He’ll still be the company’s executive chairman, which means he’ll still have his office and he will still be the ultimate boss.

He’ll be doing less of the day-to-day stuff and focusing more on the big picture, which will afford him more time for his personal projects, of which there are many, including a space venture and his ownership of The Washington Post.

The latter’s impressive reporting during the Trump era played a role in Bezos butting heads with the former president. That this is Bezos’s choice, and he can count on the cheers of shareholders whenever he opens his mouth, contrasts sharply with Trump’s forcible ejection from the White House courtesy of the votes of the American people.

One of the reasons for the calm reaction to the news among Amazon shareholders is the identity of Bezos’s successor. Andrew Jassy doesn’t have a particularly high public profile but he’s very well known on Wall Street. He runs the company’s most important profit centre. That isn’t its retail arm. It is Amazon Web Services (AWS), a cloud computing operation that Jassy built from the ground up.

Across 2020, Amazon’s operating profits almost doubled to $22.9bn (£16.8bn). Well in excess of half of that figure ($13.5bn) came from AWS.

Putting Jassy in the group CEO’s office is a statement of intent at a time when the likes of Microsoft have been snapping at AWS’s heels. It will not easily surrender its market leading position. 

The Harvard graduate joined the company in 1997, and worked for a time as Bezos’s technical assistant. He played an important role in the company’s diversification away from selling books. The transition – the formal handover will be in the third quarter of this year – looks set to be relatively seamless.

From an investor perspective, Jassy’s challenge is clearly to consolidate the growth the company has enjoyed through the pandemic. His role as the nuts and bolts man should be reassuring to them.

Amazon’s bigger challenge comes from a different direction: its image with the public and the leaders they elect. 

Amazon has stepped into the void created by the enforced closure of traditional retailers or of consumers’ reluctance to visit them where they’re open. 

Deliveries might take a little longer than usual in those places where some form of lockdown is in force, but its unrivalled logistics means that goods are still reliably getting through wherever it operates.

Its entertainment arm has also been boosted by the closure of cinemas and other entertainment venues and the boom in streaming that has turbo-charged.

Prime Video mightn’t be Netflix. But it has delivered a steady stream of hit shows and movies. 

The only real chink in the company’s armour is video games. Gamers use Amazon’s Twitch service to stream their exploits. They just aren’t using it to show off Amazon published titles despite splashy hires and a big investment. This division has yet to deliver anything to match The Boys or The Marvellous Mrs Maisel.

But as black marks go, that’s a small one, and its barely visible when set against Amazon’s all conquering performance in virtually every other field in which it operates. 

Here’s the problem: while it’s one thing to be seen to make a fair profit from services people have relied upon through the pandemic, it’s quite another to be seen to have profited from the pandemic.

Amazon’s results show that it’s keenly aware of the danger. It’s far from unusual for successful companies to tout their “purpose” and to trumpet their community outreach work, corporate giving, environmental efforts, etc.

But Amazon’s latest results take that to a different level. Unsurprisingly, they are headlined by the big announcement before running through the key numbers, as is standard practice, wrapped up with the obligatory Bezos quote.

There are then 23 separate bullet points under four separate headlines designed to portray Amazon as a business force for good.

The starter for ten is: “Investing in Employee Safety and Providing Good Jobs”. That’s clearly designed to address the longstanding criticism of Amazon’s treatment of its employees. The GMB union in the UK has repeatedly highlighted issues in its warehouses. It picked up the theme in response to the announcement, once again criticising what it described as “inhumane working conditions” while calling on Jassy to transform Amazon’s culture and to drop its hostility to unions. Similar criticisms have been levelled in other countries. 

The second batch covers “Supporting Communities”, touting various initiatives in the US, the UK and globally. The environment is covered  in “Protecting the Planet” followed by a section detailing how Amazon has “Empowered Small and Medium Sized Businesses”.

Only after that lot does the company get around to talking about its business activities, kicking off with “Shopping and Entertainment”.

There’s clearly an eye here on the changing of the guard in Washington. Republicans have repeatedly taken shots at big tech. But despite the animus Trump bore Bezos, his administration did little to clip the wings of Amazon or its peers.

That may change. The new Biden administration shows every sign of being competent where Trump’s was not. A move against big tech could command some measure of bipartisan support. It would certainly find favour with the Democrats’ vocal progressive wing.

You can see in these results evidence of an attempt to get ahead of that. Given his public profile as the face of Amazon, which is unlikely to change with him in the role of executive chairman, Bezos will likely be heavily involved here.

Amazon’s impact on the world is a key part of his legacy. Bezos would clearly much rather people focus on the way the company has revolutionised shopping, kept people supplied, entertained and connected during the pandemic, created a range of high quality devices at prices few of its rivals care to match, and so on.

But while Amazon delivers an impressive level of service, it’s impossible not to feel ambivalent whenever you click “buy”. It’s hard not to cast a glance in Bezos’s direction as yet another retailer goes bust and thousands of people are thrown out of work.  The pandemic is a major driver of the latter but it has really only accelerated an existing trend at the heart of which lies Amazon. Its tax affairs are also a hardy perennial when it comes to controversy.  

Pretty words in a results press release are all very well. But they won’t make these issues go away. That will depend on the actions of Bezos and of Jassy as Amazon moves forward. They should be aware Amazon’s financial success is at least partly connected to how they handle they company’s public relations problem(s).