JPMorgan put 9 million shares of Academy Sports on the market at a $28.80 price on Wednesday after the close, according to capital markets sources familiar with the transaction. The block trade price represented a 6.4% discount to stock's close on Wednesday.

The stock, which hit a record high of $33.74 earlier this month, last traded at $28.97.

While the sources did not identify the seller, private equity firm KKR & Co Inc owns at least that many shares, according to public filings with regulators.

KKR & Co did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

After ending 2020 with 61.6 million shares or 67.7% of Academy Sports' shares outstanding, KKR sold about 12 million shares in a late January secondary offering priced at $21.50, cutting its ASO stake to about 55% or roughly 49.6 million shares.

The next-biggest Academy Sports shareholders are Fidelity Management with about 3 million shares, Samlyn Capital with about 2 million shares and Tiger Global Management with 1.75 million, according to Refinitiv.

A 9 million-share block represents about a week's worth of trading volume based on the 30-day moving average and roughly a third of ASO's free float, which is about 28 million shares, according to Refinitiv.

ASO's stock had surged 48% year-to-date through Wednesday's close and was 137% above the October IPO price of $13 after KKR took it public.

(Reporting by Lance Tupper in New York; Writing by Sinead Carew; Editing by Ira Iosebashvili and Matthew Lewis; (Lance Tupper is a Reuters markets analyst. The views expressed are his own)