Forbes revokes Kylie Jenner’s billionaire status, accuses her of inflating her income

Kylie Jenner’s billionaire tag has been struck out by Forbes, months after being dubbed the world’s youngest billionaire. 

Recall that in March 2019, the reality show star unseated Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, then 35, as the youngest-ever self-made billionaire (he was 23 when he made his first billion 11 years ago in 2008). 

Forbes has now revoked the 22-year-old’s billionaire status, and also accused her of ‘lying about company figures and forging tax returns’ to reach the billionaire status in its report titled “Inside Kylie Jenner’s Web of Lies — and Why She’s No Longer a Billionaire”

The American business magazine which reviewed filings from Coty, the beauty giant which the mother of one sold 51 percent of her Kylie Cosmetics to in a deal valued at $1.2 billion in January 2020, found that Kylie’s beauty company “is significantly smaller, and less profitable than the family has spent years leading the cosmetics industry and media outlets to believe”. 

Forbes further revealed that the numbers the Kardashian-Jenner family gave for Kylie Cosmetics were questionable, especially after comparing them to the numbers following Coty’s acquisition.

With this new information and the COVID-19 pandemic, Kylie’s net worth is now according to their calculations “just under $900 million.”

The report read; 

“More than a third of that is the estimated $340 million in post-tax cash she would have pocketed from selling a majority of her company. 

“The rest is made up of revised earnings based on her business’s smaller size and a more conservative estimate of its profitability, plus the value of her remaining share of Kylie Cosmetics—which is not only smaller than the Jenners led us to believe, but is also worth less now than it was when the deal was announced in November, given the economic effects of the coronavirus.

“Revenues over a 12-month period preceding the deal: $177million according to the Coty presentation, far lower than the published estimates at the time. 

“More problematic, Coty said that sales were up 40% from 2018, meaning the business only generated about $125 million that year, nowhere near the $360 million the Jenners had led Forbes to believe. 

“Kylie’s skincare line, which launched in May 2019, did $100 million in revenues in its first month and a half, Kylie’s reps told us. The filings show the line was actually “on track” to finish the year with just $25 million in sales.”

Stephanie Wissink, an equity analyst covering consumer products at Jefferies told Forbes; 

“It’s fair to say that everything the Kardashian-Jenner family does is oversized. To stay on-brand, it needs to be bigger than it is.”

Forbes added that when they reached out to the Kardashian-Jenner family with “questions” on Kylie Jenner’s personal fortune which sits at just under $900 million (with more than a third of her earnings coming from the Coty sale), they stopped answering.