Ralph Nader calls out Amazon
In the last three years, Amazon’s stock has gone from $300 per share to more than $1,300. In 2017 alone, Amazon soared 56%.
Former Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader is calling out the e-commerce giant, and all other big companies that have cash flow, to pay its shareholders a dividend.
“For 20 years Amazon is sitting on a pile of cash and a lot of executive wealth hasn’t paid a dividend, that money belongs to the shareholders. It will stimulate the economy, a 2% dividend will pump $8 billion into the economy, into mutual funds, pension funds, investment funds. We did try this with Cisco,” he said during an interview on FOX Business on Monday.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is now the world's richest person with an estimated wealth of $105 billion, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index. Bezos also owns nearly 80 million shares of Amazon, nearly 16% of the company, according to Fortune.
Even with its stock prices climbing, Nader warns that the price is at an “incredibly inflationary ratio.” But he says that the company can keep shareholders at ease by establishing a stable basis of dividend payouts.
“Amazon stock is hugely inflated. It is selling at 300 times price earnings. Facebook, for example, is 33 times price earnings. But these new companies sitting on piles of shareholder cash like Facebook, Google, Amazon, they got to share it with the shareholders,” Nader said on “After the Bell.”
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