B’naire Jeff Bezos offloads USD 5 bn worth of Amazon shares

B’naire Jeff Bezos is planning to offload around USD 5 bn worth of shares in Amazon, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing (pdf). Bezos — Amazon’s biggest shareholder holding a 9% stake — has already sold around USD 8.5 bn in shares earlier this year, bringing the total of his share sales to USD 13.5 bn. This move comes shortly after Amazon’s market value exceeded USD 2 tn last month, placing it as the fifth most valuable company, behind fellow tech giants Microsoft, Google’s parent company, Alphabet, Apple, and chipmaker Nvidia.

Even with the USD 5 bn share sale, Bezos would still rank as the company’s largest shareholder, with the former CEO still holding around 912 mn shares following the share sale — equivalent to 8.8% of Amazon, according to calculations by Bloomberg.

Bezos intends to sell a total of 50 mn shares in 2024, Bloomberg reports, citing its b’naires Index.

Why are Amazon’s shares spiking? Amazon shares have surged by a third this year, driven by investor excitement around AI’s potential to boost the retail giant’s cloud division, the salmon-colored paper writes.

Market reax: The retail giant’s shares closed down 1.2% yesterday.

Bezos is not the only b’naire riding the upward trend in tech stocks: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang cashed in on 1.3 mn shares of the chipmaker for USD 169 mn this month alone, Bloomberg reports. His executives and directors also offloaded USD 700 mn worth of shares in the first six months of 2024. Nvidia’s shares are up 150% since January.

ALSO FROM PLANET FINANCE-

• Some EU nations are getting cold feet about Chinese EV tariffs: Proposed additional EU tariffs on Chinese-made EVs due to be voted on today have been seeing resistance from some members of the bloc. Nations like Germany have opposed the move over fears that retaliatory moves could affect sales in one of the German auto industry’s largest export markets, while other regional auto industry heavyweights, including Italy, Spain, and France, seem to still be firmly backing the move. (Reuters)

MARKETS THIS MORNING-

Asian markets are up in early trading, with Japan’s Topix hitting an all-time high as investors celebrate positive data on wages in the country. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng is also up 0.8% despite purchasing managers’ index data pointing to slower growth in business activity, while mainland China’s CSI 300 remained flat. Wall Street markets are closed today for the 4 July holiday, after the S&P 500 and Nasdaq notched record highs at close yesterday.

THE CLOSING BELL-

The DFM rose 0.4% yesterday on turnover of AED 426.7 mn. The index is down 8.8% YTD.

In the green: Al Salam Sudan (+15%), Al Firdous Holdings (+10.4%) and BHM Capital Financial Services (+9.8%).

In the red: Dubai Islamic Insurance and Reinsurance Co.(-2.3%), GFH Financial Group (-1.8%), and Ithmaar Holding (-1.7%).

Over on the ADX, the index rose 0.1% on turnover of AED 1.3 bn. Meanwhile Nasdaq Dubai closed down 0.02%.