Susan Walsh/AP Photos
Elon Musk sold $6.9 billion worth of Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) shares to avoid an emergency stock sale if he were forced to buy Twitter. The head of the company said that the last sale took place on August 9 and no further sales are planned.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has filed documents with the US Securities and Exchange Commission indicating that he sold some TSLA stock. With a total of six fills known, he sold 7,924,107 shares for a total of about $6.9 billion. This is another sale since he sold $8.5 billion worth of TSLA stock in April 2022. The sale is to protect investors and Tesla from being affected by the outcome of a lawsuit between him and Twitter.
Musk made an offer to buy the platform based on documentation submitted by Twitter to the SEC. However, later he had concerns about the veracity of the claimed information about the number of spam/bot accounts on the platform. Twitter refused to provide Musk with data confirming the statement in the reporting, which caused the buyer to refuse the deal. The platform sued Musk in an effort to force him to complete the deal.
If the court decision is in favor of Twitter, then Musk would be forced to close the deal and he would need more money to buy it, especially if some equity partners refuse to participate. Since he keeps all his money in shares of his companies, he was forced to sell some of them. Knowing this, the market would start to worry, which would reflect on the value of Tesla's shares and harm the company's investors. That is why Musk decided to make the sale right now.
Yes.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 10, 2022
In the (hopefully unlikely) event that Twitter forces this deal to close *and* some equity partners don’t come through, it is important to avoid an emergency sale of Tesla stock.
The head of the company said that he no longer intends to sell shares of the company for the Twitter deal. In addition, he said he would buy the shares back if he was not forced to close the deal.
Yes
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 10, 2022
© 2022, Eva Fox | Tesmanian. All rights reserved.
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About the Author
Eva Fox
Eva Fox joined Tesmanian in 2019 to cover breaking news as an automotive journalist. The main topics that she covers are clean energy and electric vehicles. As a journalist, Eva is specialized in Tesla and topics related to the work and development of the company.
