NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang continued his summer of selling, offloading a record US$322.7 million worth of shares in July just ahead of a wider tech stock sell-off.
Combined with the shares he unloaded in June, the chipmaker’s co-founder and chief executive officer has sold almost US$500 million worth since the stock hit its peak amid an AI-fuelled rally.
While the June and July sales were executed under a 10b5-1 trading plan adopted in March, the timing proved fortunate. Nvidia shares have tumbled 14 per cent over the last three trading days, including 6.4 per cent on Monday (Aug 5) as the Nasdaq 100 Index fell to its lowest level since May.
Stocks globally sold off sharply as investors dealt with a perfect storm of surprisingly weak economic data, underwhelming corporate earnings and poor seasonal trends. The S&P 500 dropped 3 per cent – its biggest one-day decline in almost two years – while a gauge of the “Magnificent Seven” megacaps such as Nvidia and Apple plunged almost 10 per cent at one point.
The downturn erased US$184.9 billion from the fortunes of the world’s 500 richest people, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, including US$75.6 billion from tech tycoons.
Huang’s net worth fell US$5.9 billion, dropping him to 16th on the wealth list with US$88.4 billion after briefly having eclipsed US$100 billion last month.
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A spokesperson for Nvidia declined to comment.
Huang’s daily sale of 120,000 shares came during a roller coaster month for Nvidia and Huang, which saw their fortunes rise and fall in tandem. In July alone, Nvidia shares accounted for four of the eight biggest market cap wipeouts, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
The Santa Clara, California-based chipmaker rebounded by the end of July following competitor Advanced Micro Devices’s upbeat revenue forecast, renewing investor enthusiasm for the sector. Nvidia added a record US$329 billion in market value on Jul 31, boosting Huang’s fortunes by nearly US$12 billion.
Huang, 61, was not the only Nvidia insider to sell in July. Board member Mark Stevens unloaded about US$125 million worth of shares, according to filings, while Jay Puri, the company’s executive vice-president of worldwide field operations, sold about US$10 million.
Nvidia insiders in total have cashed out shares worth more than US$1 billion since the beginning of the year. Huang has personally sold about US$1.4 billion in shares since the start of 2020, including this summer’s sales. He plans to continue selling into August, according to a filing. BLOOMBERG
