Out Of The Billionaires' Club: Why Forbes Dropped Kylie Jenner From The Billionaires' List

Publish date: 2024-09-30

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There have never been more billionaires in the world than there are today, and as fan curiosity continued to build, everyone seems to clamor to the headlines to see who tops the list as being among the most elite individuals in our current world. Notably missing from this year's Forbes 35th listing of billionaires in 2021, is none other than Kylie Jenner, the woman who made history as being the 'youngest self-made billionaire' as declared by Business Insider in March of 2019. After basking in the glory of being such a unique member of this very elitist club, it seems Kylie has been removed from this prestigious list, partially due to a drop in her finances, and also partially due to the fact that she was allegedly producing falsified documents, in the first place.

Kylie Jenner's Money Moves

A significant portion of Kylie Jenner's fame and fortune originated from growing up in the spotlight on her family's long-running and wildly popular hit reality television show, Keeping Up With The Kardashians.

The young, innocent, fresh-faced little girl soon grew into her role as mega-star and eventually, under the wing of her self-proclaimed 'momager,' Kris Jenner, Kylie began to hone in on her entrepreneurial skills. She developed Kylie Cosmetics, and that was the key to her meteoric rise to fame and fortune as a self-made business mogul.

Her cosmetics line was known to sell out mere seconds after new products were launched, and the success of her line quickly catapulted her net worth to the $1 billion mark, thus earning her honor of being part of the billionaire's club at the tender age of just 21.

RELATED: 12 Top Successful Beauty Brands Owned By Celebrities

The Questionable Credits Taken By The Entrepreneur

After reaping the benefits of being declared the youngest self-made billionaire to ever grace the cover of Forbes Magazine, Kylie Jenner's integrity and honesty quickly began to be questioned. Reports started flooding in that she had falsified the documents that led to the valuation of her corporate earnings, and social media was set ablaze with accusations of falsified documents having been presented to the executives at Forbes.

Of course, Forbes is a well-known and respected reporting resource, and they did their due diligence when evaluating Kylie Jenner's net worth.

It turns out that there were some errors in reporting, and there's no other way to explain the inconsistencies than to reveal that Kris Jenner was, in all likelihood, presenting falsified documents to the executives and evaluating officers at Forbes.

This situation continued to raise eyebrows after Coty's acquisition of the majority of Kylie Jenner's brand, Kylie Cosmetics. Coty's chief financial officer tells Forbes that after evaluating the numbers submitted to them, and being told that sales were up 40% from 2018, their calculations indicated "the business only generated about $125 million that year, nowhere near the $360 million the Jenners had led Forbes to believe. "  They went on to indicate that the cosmetics line was; "actually on track to finish the year with just $25 million in sales" and that the business; "was a lot smaller than everybody had expected.”

As it turns out, the business was so much smaller that deep calculations reveal there is no way the numbers reported by the Jenners in the early days of the agreement could be true. Forbes poses the question; "If Kylie Cosmetics did $125 million in sales in 2018, how could it have done $307 million in 2016 (as the company’s supposed tax returns state) or $330 million in 2017?"

Accusations of falsified documents were one of the big reasons Kylie fell from grace, and tumbled off the list of billionaires she once perched atop of.

Mega Sales Leading To Big Residual Losses

Another reason Forbes was forced to remove Kylie Jenner from their list of current billionaires has nothing at all to do with potentially forged documents, and everything to do with the fact that she recently sold her biggest money maker.

When she was the sole owner of Kylie Cosmetics the profit margins belonged solely to her. Whether or not she and Kris Jenner dramatized or over-stated her earnings remains a moot point in this instance, as the focus shifted to the value of the sale of her corporation, when she decided to let it go.

When Kylie Jenner penned the sale of Kylie Cosmetics to Coty, Forbes declares that that accounted for; "$340 million in post-tax cash she would have pocketed from selling a majority of her company."

Now that she has relinquished  the rights to that enormous chunk of Kylie Cosmetics, it means that the company's earnings are also divided, and she's losing out on sales numbers that seemed to have been inflated in the first place.

Forbes goes on to say that they have been forced to do a recalculation of Kylie Jenner's overall earnings, and that "a more realistic accounting of her personal fortune puts it at just under $900 million, despite the headlines surrounding the Coty deal that seemed to confirm her billionaire status."

This begs the question; "how much is Kylie Jenner really worth, then?" This seems to depend on the source at this point, however, the top two leading sources are definitely pegging her overall net-worth valuation as being significantly less than $1 billion. The Business Insider is estimating she has a $700 million net worth, while Forbes is being more generous, and calculating the sum of Kylie Jenner's worth to be closer to the $900 million mark.

General consensus is that she remains one of the wealthiest people in her age bracket, and she'll maintain a high net value standing, by anyone's standards.

However for the moment, Kylie Jenner is officially stripped of her billionaire status, and adding insult to injury, her sister Kim Kardashian has officially been welcomed to the billionaire's club. It's assumed her documents will be heavily scrutinized, as well.

READ NEXT: Billionaire's Have Seen A Crazy Surge In Their Fortune Amidst The Pandemic, Here's Why

Source: The Business Insider,Forbes Magazine, Insider

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