MUMBAI: Netflix co-chief executive officer Reed Hastings has collected $225 million from a stock sale, the latest in a series of such transactions the billionaire has made this year, totalling $616 million.

A Bloomberg Quint report states that Hastings has cashed in enough moolah in 2020 to produce all four seasons of marquee series The Crown, all six seasons of Peaky Blinders, or the equivalent of about 4.7 million annual Netflix subscriptions, based on average monthly subscription costs. The sales, the latest of which was on 21 December, were made as part of a trading plan believed to boost the streamer-producer’s content creation budget.

Netflix stock has climbed 63 per cent this year as the streaming service has added 28.1 million new subscribers during the first nine months of 2020, accelerated by increased demand for at-home entertainment during the Covid2019 pandemic. In fact, Hastings has seen his wealth increase about $2.2 billion this year to $6.4 billion, going by Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which also pegs him as the 120th richest person in the US.

Hastings sold 437,311 shares of Netflix stock on 21 December 2020 at an average price of $527.26 a share. The total sale was $230.6 million. Prior to this, he sold 213,346 shares on 23 November 2020 at the average price of $482.51. The price of the stock has increased by 9.29 per cent since.

For the uninitiated, Hastings started his first tech business, Pure Software, in 1991, before going on to co-found Netflix with Pure colleague Marc Randolph in 1997.

Another former Netflix director Anthony Wood, who is also the co-founder of Roku Inc, has made hay during the pandemic. Wood’s wealth has doubled in the last three months as sales of the firm’s streaming players increased 57 per cent in the third quarter from a year earlier.