Perhaps for Amazon’s founder, the third time’s a charm. Jeff Bezos has been on an Amazon stock-selling spree — and this week he offloaded shares for the third time in a month.
Bezos sold roughly $2 billion worth of Amazon stock between Feb. 13 and Feb. 14, a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) disclosed on Thursday (Feb. 15). He sold about 12 million shares at an average price of $169.50 each.
Bezos started selling Amazon stock on Feb. 7 and Feb. 8, unloading about 12 million shares at the time. He continued his selling frenzy on Feb. 9 and Feb. 12, dropping another 12 million shares. This comes as Amazon’s stock has risen 13% since the start of the year.
In total, Bezos has sold off about $6 billion in shares this February, shrinking his stake in the company by about 2%. But he doesn’t seem finished yet. In a prior filing, Bezos proposed the sale of 50 million Amazon shares worth an estimated $8.4 billion.
The stock sales could also propel Bezos’ net worth, allowing him to reclaim his spot as the world’s wealthiest person. Bezos currently sits at the second spot on Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index, with an estimated net worth of $194 billion. He’s just $20 billion behind Elon Musk, who currently perches atop the rankings. But Musk’s net worth has fallen considerably this year as Tesla stock has plummeted.
Bezos saves big with his Florida digs
Bezos’s move to Miami from Seattle last year has likely saved him millions in state taxes, as Florida has no capital gains tax. If he still lived in Washington state, where a 7% capital gains tax was enacted in 2022 and upheld in November, he would have incurred roughly $420 million in taxes on these stock transactions so far. Bezos announced his move from Seattle, where Amazon is based, in an Instagram post in November.
The billionaire said he was moving back to the city where he attended high school to be closer to his parents and the operations of his aerospace company, Blue Origin. Bezos didn’t mention Washington state’s new capital gains tax as a reason for his move. But the billionaire didn’t sell any Amazon stock in 2022 or 2023 while he was still living there and the new tax was enacted, Fortune reports.
If he completes his proposed sale of all 50 million shares, he could end up saving over $600 million.