Jeff Bezos Now Owns Less Than 9% Of Amazon, Billionaire Divests $863.5M Worth Of Shares As Part Of $5B Liquidation Plan

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Amazon, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos sold more shares of the e-commerce giant, a late-Tuesday filing by the company with the SEC showed.

What Happened: Bezos reported three tranches of stock sales, two of which were done on Monday and the third one on Friday. The details of the transactions are as follows:

  • 3,085,116 shares divested Friday at an average price of $200.07
  • 1,171,794 shares at $200.33 apiece and 57,199 shares at $201.05 per share on Monday.
The selling was in conformance with the Rule 10b5-1 trading plan adopted by Bezos on March 2. The rule offers corporate insiders a way to transact in company stock over a predefined period, provided the insiders can establish that they were unaware of any material non-public information when the pre-existing plan was established.

The total value of shares divested over the past two trading sessions is $863.49 million.

Following the most recent transaction, Bezos is left with 930,696,284 shares in Amazon, representing an ownership interest of 8.9% based on the 10.41 billion in outstanding shares.

The most recent disclosure comes close on the heels of the sale of $333.09 million worth of shares on July 2 and July 3 which was disclosed on Friday. Put together, the billionaire has pocketed roughly $1.2 billion from the recent divestments.

Incidentally, the company said in a separate filing on July 2 that Bezos intends to sell 25 million shares valued at $4.93 billion.

Why It's Important: Bezos is the world's second-richest man, with Bloomberg estimating his wealth at $221 billion, and the bulk of his net worth is tied to his stake in Amazon. The billionaire also owns the Washington Post and space company Blue Origin, which competes with Elon Musk's SpaceX.

Amazon shares have been on a tear this year, riding on the artificial intelligence mania. On Monday, the stock hit an intraday high of $201.20 before pulling back below the psychological $200 barrier by the close. It edged up 0.03% on Tuesday before settling at $199.34, according to Benzinga Pro data. This is slightly off the $200 closing high reached on Friday.