Bernard Arnault has made a series of successful buy-ins that have catapulted his wealth to new heights, including the likes of Google and most famously, the luxury giant LVMH. And the billionaire Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton CEO could have had even another investment win under his belt: He just revealed he lost out on a sizable fortune by selling his Netflix shares early.
“We had almost a full 20% [of Netflix],” Arnault said recently, reflecting back on the investment decision during the Legend podcast. “Yes, I sold too early. We made a very good investment, but since then I think it’s increased 10-fold.”
In 1999, Arnault began by buying up a chunk of Netflix for $30 million through his private family holding company, Groupe Arnault, just two years after the entertainment company’s inception. It was Netflix’s largest investor at the time, when the company was still mailing out DVDs as a service. The French fashion magnate owned nearly a fifth of the entire company, which was already a “huge success” at the time, and cashed out most of his stock four years later when Netflix boasted a market cap of $500 million. Now, Netflix is valued at $300 billion—600 times higher than when he sold most of his stake.
