Jeff Bezos and Amazon Stock Sales

Yesterday at the Space Symposium, Jeff Bezos had some interesting comments on Blue Origin’s plans. At around the 23 minute mark of the video at the link:

My business model right now—this isn’t the future business model—but my business model right now for Blue Origin is I sell about a billion dollars a year of Amazon stock and I use it to invest in Blue Origin.

In the past few years, there have been some headlines about big stock sales made by Bezos. In November, 2013, Brian Solomon of Forbes reported a sale of exactly one million shares for more than $270 million:

The $270 million Bezos pocketed this week, along with stock sales scattered through earlier parts of 2013 that push his total take-home haul above $500 million, will help fund the billionaire’s growing list of extracurricular pursuits.

In August, 2015, Emily Parkhurst of the Puget Sound Business Journal reported another sale of just over one million shares, this time valued at $534 million. In that same article, Parkhurst mentions a 2014 sale of $351 million worth of Amazon stock.

Last May, Bezos sold yet another million shares for $671 million—the most money, by far, he has ever made in a single sale. And at that time, Amazon’s share price was around $680.

As I write this, it’s sitting around $900 per share.

One million shares sold today would bring in—you guessed it—just about a billion dollars.

And most importantly, Jeff Bezos still owns more than 80 million shares.