Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos has sold over $3.1 billion worth of the company’s shares this week, according to multiple filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
The shares sold by Bezos were worth more than $3 billion, priced between $3,102.85 and $3,183.26 a piece, at the time of sale.
The Amazon CEO still holds more than 54 million shares, Bezos had earlier said he would be selling $1 billion worth of Amazon shares every year to fund Blue Origin, his space exploration company.
This is a quite a huge number compared to the $2.8 billion worth of shares sold by him in 2019.
Following tax deductions, the world’s richest man will take home an estimated $2.4 billion, Forbes reported on Wednesday.
The SEC filings said the transactions were “effected pursuant to a Rule 10b5-1 trading plan adopted by the reporting person.”
The world’s richest person previously shed about $4.1 billion worth of Amazon shares between January and February this year.
Bezos’s total sale of more than $7 billion worth of shares of the e-commerce giant so far this year is already significantly higher than last year’s total sale of $2.8 billion, according to CNBC, which earlier reported the news.
The billionaire has stated he intends to sell about $1 billion worth of shares each year to fund his space exploration company Blue Origin, which rivals Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
Amazon reported solid second quarter results last week, registering a 40 per cent increase in net sales to $88.9 billion, compared with $63.4 billion in the same period last year.