Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos plans to sell 50 million Amazon shares over the next one year, according to a regulatory filing posted on Friday. He owns nearly One billion shares of Amazon stock. According to the company’s latest annual report, the sale plan was adopted on 8th November, 2023 and will be completed by January 31, 2025 subject to fulfillment of certain conditions.
The securities are worth $8.6 billion at the current market price of $171.8 per share.
Amazon’s annual report disclosing the stock sale plan was published on Friday. Such a Disclosure of Stock sale is mandatory for a company as per a Securities and Exchange commission rule in the US. Amazon stock price climbed nearly 8% higher on Friday after the e-commerce giant reported higher-than-expected sales for the holiday shopping quarter ending on 31st December last year and its lucrative cloud business signaled early gains from AI-assisted features.
Amazon stock price had surged more than 80% last year amid a broader rally in tech stocks before outperforming the benchmark S&P 500 Index.
Jeff Bezos, 60, founded Amazon as an online bookseller in 1994. He stepped down as Company CEO in 2021. He, however, is serving as Executive Chairman of the board at Amazon. Since stepping away from his daily activities as CEO of the e-commerce leader, Bezos has made headlines mostly for his colorful fashion statement, relationship with fiancé Lauren Sanchez and space-faring ambitions via his private company Blue Origin. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, he is currently ranked at No. 3 with a net worth of $185 billion.
Amazon stock price declined in 2022 due to pandemic’s impact on demand for e-commerce and broader microeconomic uncertainty. Amazon’s current CEO Andy Jassy has since taken up aggressive cost-cutting measures including multiple rounds of employee layoffs leaving tens of thousands of employees jobless. Some of the layoffs have even continued this year also.
But Amazon stock price has since rallied sharply, climbing nearly 90% since falling to $85 a share in December, 2022. So, it seems to be the correct time for Bezos to sell. Besides this, Bezos has recently moved to Florida from Washington state. Bezos’ home state Washington upheld a capital gain tax measure last year while Florida currently doesn’t have capital gain tax.