Oprah Winfrey just made more news, saying she lost 26 pounds on her Weight Watchers diet. Even better, her wallet got a lot fatter. According to Market Watch, Winfrey racked in a whopping $12 million for merely writing about how she was able to lose weight and still eat bread.
“I lost 26 pounds, and I have eaten bread every single day,” she said in her testimonial clip.
An hour after O sent her story into the Twitterverse, Weight Watchers shares climbed slightly over $2 a share, and since Winfrey owns roughly 6 million shares, the surge in share prices made the celeb $12 million just like that.
Oprah as a board member and large share owner of the company. She’s made a fortune since her October investment. Using a price of $13 a share from Tuesday afternoon, that means she’s made $61 million on her total investment.
On a per-pound basis, that’s $2.36 million of profits gained for each pound lost.
She has the best of both worlds: getting richer while getting slimmer.
Oprah’s October investment came at a price of $6.79 per share. She bought about 6.36 million shares, which cost her $43.2 million.
She was also granted 3.51 million options to buy shares at that same $6.79 price. Combining shares and options, her total stake is worth almost 10 million shares — 9.88 million shares to be more specific. The stock has practically doubled in that time, even including the rapid decline in the past several weeks.