L Brands founder Les Wexner is dumping more than $2 billion worth of stock he controls in the retailer that he founded in 1963.
L Brands, operator of Bath & Body Works and Victoria's Secret, said late Tuesday afternoon that Wexner and entities he and his wife, Abigail, control are selling about 30 million shares of stock.
With the stock trading at just over $75 on Wednesday, the shares would go for more than $2.2 billion.
The sale is coming at an opportune time. The company's shares are trading near a multiyear high and have quadrupled over the past year.
Once the sale is complete, the Wexners will control 5 million shares, or about 1.8% of the company's stock. Before the sale, the couple controlled 12.7% of the shares, according to a regulatory filing.
This is the third sale of shares by the Wexners this year as Wexner and his wife further unwind their connection to the company.
But this sale is by far the largest. The two previous sales totaled 8 million shares that sold for about $500 million.
L Brands said 20 million shares will be sold in the open market, while it is buying the other 10 million as part of a plan to repurchase the company's stock.
Wexner retired last year as chief executive officer and chairman as the longest tenured CEO among the biggest U.S. public companies. He and his wife left the board as of this May's annual meeting.
His decision to resign came after he had received criticism for his ties to child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
Epstein killed himself in August 2019 while in jail awaiting trial on charges that he sexually exploited and abused dozens of underage girls between 2002 and 2005. He had been previously convicted of similar crimes.
Epstein for years was a Wexner financial adviser and in 1998 was identified as president — along with Wexner — of the New Albany Co. in Ohio business records. He also became a trustee of the Wexner Foundation, but had no executive responsibilities for running it, Wexner has said.
Some Victoria's Secret customers, meanwhile, had grown tired of the retailer's hypersexual emphasis.
The sale comes just weeks before the name L Brands goes away and Victoria's Secret and Bath & Body Works split into separate public companies. The split is expected to take place Aug. 2.
Victoria's Secret's new board, with the exception of CEO Martin Waters, will be made up of exclusively of women who are taking the company in a new direction away from the Victoria's Secret Angels and their rail-thin, traditional gender role persona, which has been retired.
L Brands also said Tuesday that it is raising its earnings guidance for its second quarter, forecasting a profit of $1.20 to $1.30 per share. The old guidance had been 80 cents to $1.
The company said sales for the nine weeks that ended July 3 totaled $2.35 billion, about 70% higher than the year ago when many of the company's stores were closed because of the pandemic.
