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After selling off about 50 million shares of Amazon stock in February, Jeff Bezos said he plans to sell millions more.
Bezos, founder of the e-commerce giant and its current executive chairman, announced he would sell another 25 million shares of Amazon stock — worth about $5 billion — in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing disclosed late Tuesday.
According to filing, the sale could have taken place as early as Tuesday when Amazon hit a record high of $200 per share.
Bezos started selling Amazon stock this year by unloading 12 million shares between Feb. 7 and Feb. 8, another 12 million between Feb. 9 and Feb. 12, another batch of 12 million between Feb. 13 and Feb. 14, and finally about 14 million between Feb. 15 and Feb. 20.
Over nine trading days, Bezos sold a total of 50 million shares, worth about $8.5 billion. Including this most recent announcement, Bezos’ total for the year comes to about $13.5 billion worth of stock.
These transactions are part of a trading plan Bezos adopted in November to sell off about 50 million by Jan 31, 2025, an SEC filing disclosed. Previously, Bezos had not sold any Amazon stock since 2021.
The adoption of this plan coincided with Bezos’s announcement that month that he was moving from Seattle to Miami.
Bezos announced his move in an Instagram post in November, saying 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.
If he still lived in Washington state, where a 7% capital gains tax was enacted in 2022 and upheld in November, those transactions would have cost Bezos nearly $945 million.
Bezos didn’t mention Washington state’s new capital gains tax as a reason for his move. But while living there, the billionaire didn’t sell any Amazon stock in 2022 or 2023 after the tax was enacted, Fortune reported.