Forbes announced over the weekend that Kanye West can officially be deemed a billionaire.
Known best for his bold music and unstoppable Yeezy lines, Kanye West is not lacking in ventures and opportunities to grow his wealth. But until just days ago, he was ranked as the third highest-paid celebrity of 2019 with earnings of $150 million. Now, through a series of estimates mixed with receipts and numbers provided by the team at Kanye, Forbes has declared that the net worth estimate for West is $1.3 billion, notably $300 million more than that of his sister-in-law Kylie Jenner, who became Forbes’ youngest self-made billionaire last year.
As to where all of his fortunes originate, a bulk comes from his Adidas Yeezy collaboration. Forbes estimated that the Yeezy brand took in $1.3 billion in revenue at the end of 2019, saying: “Our sources projected the shoes would finish 2019 with revenue north of $1.5 billion (Adidas would not comment then, or now). Per recent conversations and internal documents, we believe the final revenue number ended up closer to $1.3 billion.”
Out of that $1.3 billion, Forbes reported that West likely received about $140 million in royalties.
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Those royalties then got applied to a multiple to determine how much the designer’s stake is worth. “His place in the capital stack is a preferred place to be,” Matt Smith, CEO of Royalty Exchange, an online marketplace where investors and owners can buy and sell all types of royalties, told Forbes.
Smith then determined the multiple for West’s stake is between 10 and 12. Forbes leaned conservatively and used 10 as the multiple for their model to bring the total for $1.4 billion. “But it’s a private, highly illiquid $1.4 billion; our rule-of-thumb for private assets like that is to lop off at least 10%,” explained the article’s author Zack O’Malley Greenburg. “That’s $1.26 billion.”
Then, according to a statement provided to the publisher from West’s team, the rapper holds a combined $52 million in cash and stocks and an additional $102 million in land and properties. Plus, his music label, with his own recording and publishing rights, rakes in at least $90 million on top of the rest of his fortune. Those assets in addition to West’s 1.26 billion from Yeezy brings his total fortune to approximately $1.3 billion.
West joined forces for his first Adidas Yeezy collection in 2015. Before that, the rapper dropped two different Air Yeezy sneakers through a limited partnership with Nike that commenced back in 2007 and lasted up until 2014.
