Nvidia's stock price soared in June. After surpassing Microsoft to become the “world's most valuable company,” CEO Lao Huang reduced his holdings and cashed out. Now that Amazon's stock price has reached a new high, founder Bezos also wants to reduce his holdings by 25 million shares.
The stock prices of US tech giants continued to reach new highs, yet the founders and executives began to cut their holdings and cash out.
According to regulatory documents, Amazon founder Bezos revealed plans to reduce its Amazon stock holdings by 25 million shares after the market on Tuesday. Judging from Amazon's stock price level in the past two trading days, the value of Bezos's stock holdings reduced this time is close to 5 billion US dollars.
Amazon's stock price hit a record high of $200.43 in Wednesday's stock market. The cumulative increase this year was more than 30%, outperforming the 4% increase in the Dow Jones Industrial Index during the same period.
In fact, this is the second time this year that Bezos has taken steps to reduce his holdings. As early as February, he reduced his Amazon stock holdings worth 8.5 billion US dollars. As the second-richest Forbes in the world and worth 214 billion US dollars, Bezos still holds 8.8% of Amazon's shares, or about 912 million shares, after Tuesday's holdings reduction plan.
And Bezos wasn't the only one to drastically reduce its holdings when the company's stock price soared.
Nvidia CEO Hwang In-hoon also sold 1.3 million Nvidia shares worth about US$169 million in June. This is also the biggest time he has sold Nvidia in a single month.
Although the number of shares sold in June only accounted for a small percentage of Hwang In-hoon's personal holdings, since Nvidia's stock price, the AI leader, continued to soar in June, the sell-off and cashing out of that month's sell-off made a lot of profit. Nvidia rose nearly 13% in June alone, with a cumulative increase of about 166% this year.
Nvidia's stock price has soared, and as CEO Lao Huang, his personal wealth has also soared. According to Forbes, Lao Huang's net worth has more than doubled in the past 6 months, and currently ranks 12th in the world with a net worth of 112 billion US dollars.
In fact, Lao Huang's stock holdings reduction plan was announced as early as March of this year. At the time, Nvidia mentioned in its quarterly financial report that Huang Renxun will sell up to 600,000 shares through the 10b5-1 share sale plan by the end of March 2025. Market analysts pointed out that the shares sold by Hwang In-hoon are part of his executive compensation plan, including restricted stock units (RSUs) and performance stock units (PSUs), which are common practices of corporate CEOs when complying with regulations.
However, Lao Huang is not the only “own person” to reduce his Nvidia stock holdings. According to media estimates, Nvidia executives and directors sold Nvidia shares in the first half of this year to cash out more than 700 million US dollars in total.