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$4 billion or $346 million? What Amazon's latest Form 4 reports.

August 7, 2026 · 10-minute episode · everything below is reproduced from the primary documents linked at the bottom

Two documents, two numbers

Two public documents about the same Amazon shares were filed in the same week. A Form 144 — a notice of intent to sell — proposes the sale of 15,000,000 shares and states an aggregate market value of $4,073,700,000: exactly 15,000,000 × $271.58, Amazon's closing price on July 31. It is a valuation stamp on a notice, not money received. The Form 4 reports what actually happened: 1,209,649 shares sold on August 3 at a weighted average of about $286.41 (range $286.04–$287.00, per the footnote) — roughly $346.5 million gross, derived, before costs. The gap between the two figures is 11.8×. Anyone who reported a four-billion-dollar sale was off by roughly twelve times.

Where the 15,000,000 comes from

Not from a guess — from Amazon itself. The Form 4's footnote says the sale was effected under a Rule 10b5-1 plan adopted 11/14/2025. Amazon's FY2025 annual report (Item 9B) describes that plan in the company's own words: up to 15,000,000 shares over a period ending February 26, 2027, “subject to certain conditions” — none described, and that is not an omission; the rule does not require pricing terms. Nothing cross-references between the three documents; the link is an inference resting on the same adoption date in all three, the same 15,000,000 in two of them, and the fact that Amazon was required to list every plan adopted by an officer that quarter — it lists exactly one for this filer.

One limit, stated plainly: the plan date tells us when the arrangement was set up. It does not tell us that this sale — this date, this size, this price — was decided back in November. Plan terms are not public.

What the record shows about earlier plans

Every sale row in this filer's Form 4s since 2023 names its own plan adoption date — 91 sale rows, none unattributed. Three earlier plans (ceilings of 50M, 25M, 25M shares) are each accounted for to the share by the Form 4s that followed, and each reached its ceiling using only part of its window. Those are completed records, not a schedule: plans can end early — the same Item 9B paragraph reports another Amazon officer terminating a plan six months after adopting it — and the filings say nothing about what will be sold next.

The previous Form 4 from this filer reported charitable gifts, not sales. The last open-market sale before this one was 375 days earlier — and the ordinary explanation is on the record: by that date the previous plan had already sold its full ceiling. There was nothing left in it to sell. Under the current plan, the first reported sale came 262 days after adoption — more than double any predecessor. Nothing in the filings explains that gap; plan terms are not public.

The market backdrop, stated plainly

Amazon reported Q2 results on July 30. The stock rose 15.32% on July 31 to $271.58. On August 3 it touched an all-time high of $287.20, closed at $284.02, and crossed $3 trillion in market value. The executions on this Form 4 cleared between $286.04 and $287.00. And in the same breath, the ordinary context: the plan behind this sale predates those earnings by more than eight months. For scale, a second Amazon Form 4 covers the same date — a different officer, 1,000 shares, also under a plan adopted that same November week. That is what this mechanism looks like when it is working normally.

Which denominator?

Whenever you see “his stake” with a percentage, ask which denominator.

Check us. Every number above traces to a linked document below. Episode thread on X: @wefollowfilings

Sources

Figures as of the August 5, 2026 filing; a later filing under the same plan changes the ceiling arithmetic. Watch on YouTube: youtu.be/j9ELr6WAcTw