According to the latest regulatory disclosure, Bezos is expected to sell 25 million shares of Amazon stock worth $4.9 billion in July this year; at this time, Amazon's stock price is at a new high. Last month, Amazon's market cap exceeded $2 trillion. This potential sale will bring the total amount of stocks sold by Bezos this year to over $13.4 billion.
On July 4th, Caixin News reported that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos plans to sell nearly $5 billion worth of Amazon stocks, which will make his total stock sales this year exceed $13.4 billion. Just a few days ago, the market capitalization of the tech giant broke the $2 trillion mark.
According to the latest regulatory filings, Bezos is expected to sell 25 million shares of Amazon stock, worth $4.9 billion, in July this year. In February this year, Bezos sold $8.5 billion worth of stock.
This is a time when Amazon's stock price is reaching a new high. Last month, Amazon joined the ranks of US technology companies with market capitalizations exceeding $2 trillion, following competitors Microsoft and Google parent Alphabet. As of Wednesday (July 3), the market capitalization of Amazon was $2.06 trillion on the US stock market closing.
Since the beginning of this year, Amazon's stock price has risen by a third, because investors are optimistic about the possible increase in growth of the company's cloud computing department due to artificial intelligence.
However, in the technology field, its market capitalization still lags behind Nvidia, Apple and Microsoft, whose market capitalizations have all exceeded the threshold of $3 trillion.
According to S&P Capital IQ data, after stepping down as Amazon CEO in 2021, Bezos still serves as the executive chairman of the company and is also its largest shareholder, holding about 9% of the shares.
However, since Bezos stepped down from the day-to-day operational management of Amazon, he has started to focus on other businesses, including his space flight group Blue Origin and the US newspaper The Washington Post. In 2013, he acquired The Washington Post for $250 million.
In addition to the major Amazon stock sales planned for this year, Bezos has also sold small amounts of stocks to provide funding for charitable causes. Regulatory filings show that he sold $117 million worth of stocks in May this year to provide funding for Day 1 Academies. Day 1 Academies is a non-profit educational organization founded by him, inspired by Montessori education.
According to reports, the billionaire has recently moved to Florida, and analysts say this may save him a lot of taxes, which seems to be a part of his gradual withdrawal from Amazon.
Amazon's internal leadership is currently undergoing restructuring. Matt Garman, a senior executive at the company who previously served as AWS's vice president responsible for sales, marketing, and global services, recently took over as CEO of AWS.
According to regulatory filings, Garman's predecessor as CEO, Adam Selipsky, has sold more than $3 million worth of Amazon stock since April.