Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon (AMZN) and one of the world’s richest people, sold shares worth $737 million of the e-commerce giant in late June, according to a U.S. regulatory filing made public on Tuesday. The sale included about 3.3 million shares of the e-commerce giant.
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The move may raise eyebrows, but the sale appears to be part of routine financial planning—not a warning sign for investors.
The transactions were made under a 10b5-1 trading plan that Bezos adopted in March. These plans allow company insiders to sell stock at scheduled times, helping avoid concerns about trading based on non-public information.
Bezos Still Holds a Large Stake in AMZN
Even after the sale, Bezos remains Amazon’s biggest shareholder, holding about 905 million shares. According to TipRanks’ ownership data, he holds the largest individual stake in AMZN at 10.10%. Last year, he also sold nearly $5 billion worth of Amazon stock under similar preset plans.
Bezos founded Amazon in 1994 and stepped down as CEO in 2021, though he remains executive chairman. He often sells shares to fund other ventures, including his space company Blue Origin and his various philanthropic efforts.
Amazon Stock Price Movement
AMZN stock was up slightly on Tuesday, closing at $220.46. While Amazon stock didn’t react sharply to the sale, it has been trending higher in recent months as the company expands in cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and retail.
The stock sale appears to be part of normal financial planning, and not a sign of any major shift in Bezos’s outlook on the company he built from scratch.
However, it is important to keep an eye on the Informative trades of corporate insiders, given their knowledge of a company’s growth potential. Interestingly, TipRanks offers daily insider transactions as well as a list of top corporate insiders. It also provides a list of hot stocks that boast either a Very Positive or Positive insider confidence signal.
Is Amazon Stock a Buy, Sell, or Hold?
Turning to Wall Street, the analysts’ consensus rating for Amazon is Strong Buy, based on 47 Buy and one Hold rating over the past three months. With that comes an average AMZN stock price target of $242.98, representing a potential 10.22% upside for the shares.
