Since late June, Jeff Bezos has deftly sold shares of Amazon stock AMZN -0.30% for a cash out of $5.7 billion. Under a 10b5-1 trading plan, which lets corporate insiders sell stock in accordance with a pre-set timetable, these transactions were carried out. With the final 4.2 million sold for $954 million just days before the company’s second-quarter earnings report on July 31, the sale covered 25 million shares.
This timeline corresponds with a 38% rise in the Amazon stocks since its low in April. Investors are worried about whether the company’s significant investments in artificial intelligence will eventually boost profits despite this upward trend. At 12% revenue growth and 15% average earnings growth, other leading technology companies lag behind this pace.
Amazon has set aside $104 billion for capital spending this year, including $30 billion set aside for new data centers situated in Pennsylvania and North Carolina. Retaining roughly 884 million shares, over 8% of Amazon stocks, Bezos is still the biggest single shareholder in the firm. With a net worth of $252.3 billion, his interest in Amazon serves as the foundation for his remarkable wealth and places him third third-richest person on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Since 2002, Bezos has sold more than $50 billion of Amazon stocks. He sold 75 million shares in 2024 alone, totalling $13.6 billion. This year he has also given to several charities shares worth about $190 million. His only documented buy was a single Amazon stock share for $114.77 in 2022. The market’s reaction to these recent sales has been rather subdued, with the stock price remaining constant all during the selling period. Rather than a shift in Bezos’s view of Amazon itself, investors seem to view this move as part of his continuous plan to spread his holdings.