Lululemon founder Chip Wilson missed out on billions of dollars by slashing his stake in the yogawear giant (2024)

• Lululemon founder Chip Wilson missed out on billions of dollars by selling the company's shares.
• Wilson owned 29% of the apparel retailer in 2013, a stake worth about $21 billion today.
• But he slashed it to around 8% by early 2020, and the stock has surged by 130% since then.

Lululemon's founder may feel like he left his wallet in the yoga studio, given the fortune he missed out on by selling shares in the apparel retailer.

Chip Wilson owned 42 million shares, or about 29% of Lululemon in April 2013, regulatory filings show.

The company's stock price was about $75 then, valuing his stake at $3.2 billion. Lululemon stock has surged by nearly seven-fold since then to north of $500 , but Wilson offloaded the bulk of his shares before it took off.

Wilson more than halved his stake to 13% by April 2018, when Lululemon shares were still trading below $90. He pared the holding to its current level of about 10.7 million shares, or 8%, over the next two years during the stock more than doubled to about $220.

The share price has soared by another 130% to record highs since then, leaving Lululemon worth more than $60 billion.

All else being equal, if Wilson had retained his entire 29% stake, it would be worth about $21 billion — nearly quadruple the $5.4 billion value of his remaining position. Forbes pegs Wilson's fortune at about $7 billion today, and estimates his net worth at over $20 billion if he'd retained all of his Lululemon shares.

That amount of wealth would put him in the top 100 of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, among the likes of Indian steel titan Lakshmi Mittal ($20.3 billion) and Facebook cofounder Dustin Moskovitz ($19.7 billion).

It's worth noting that Wilson stepped down from Lululemon's board in 2013 after making controversial comments. The stock might not have performed as well if he'd stayed and kept all of his shares.

Wilson also netted several billion dollars from the stock he sold, so he didn't miss out entirely. Moreover, he's deployed his money in other places, for example by purchasing stakes in Fila-owner Anta and Amer, Arc'teryx and Wilson's parent company.

Amer has confidentially filed to go public at a $10 billion valuation, Bloomberg reported, which promises to double the value of Wilson's stake to $2.7 billion, Forbes reported.

The entrepreneur, who told Forbes he's an avid Monopoly player, has also been scooping up commercial real estate in Vancouver. Lululemon and Wilson's Hold It All company didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.

Wilson is still Lululemon's largest individual shareholder, meaning he's benefited more than anyone from its recent success.

The retailer has nearly doubled revenues to more than $8 billion in the past two financial years, and lifted its annual operating profits by 60% to $1.3 billion, its latest annual report shows.