On Wednesday night, Elon Musk announced in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that he had sold another $3.6 billion worth of Tesla stock . The sale comes amid the ongoing chaos surrounding the Twitter acquisition.
Elon Musk sold about 22 million shares of the electric vehicle. The transactions took place from Monday to Wednesday.
He remains Tesla's largest shareholder with a 13.4% stake, according to financial market data provider Refinitiv.
See also: Tesla launches Steam in its cars
Tesla stock has fallen about 20 points in that time period, losing more than 10% of its value.
Tesla is one of the worst-performing among major automakers and technology this year as investors worry that Mr. Musk's acquisition of Twitter is distracting him from the company.
It is worth noting that a few days ago it became known that Musk is no longer the richest person in the world – this title belonged to him since the beginning of 2021. Before Musk, Jeff Bezos was at the top of Forbes’ annual list of the World’s Billionaires. According to the Forbes 2022 list, Elon Musk took the first place even though the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX was considered the richest person in the world since last year, according to a Bloomberg report (Forbes claimed that Bezos was the first). Now, however, his place has been taken by Bernard Arnault, CEO of the luxury goods group LVMH. Elon Musk’s fortune is now at $174 billion, while Arnault’s is at $191 billion, according to Forbes.
See also: Twitter: Account tracking Musk's Jet suspended
Elon Musk had earlier taken to Twitter to try to reassure shareholders that they would not be harmed by owning the social media company. We now know that at the time, he was in the process of selling millions of shares.
Musk has sold Tesla shares before, since he considered buying Twitter. The first sale took place last December. At the time, he had conducted a poll on Twitter asking whether or not he should buy the platform. Later, he claimed that he sold enough of his Tesla stake to finance the purchase. After various problems and legal disputes with Twitter (as he later wanted to avoid the deal), he went ahead with the purchase.
He has since sold billions of dollars worth of Tesla shares. However, earlier this year, Elon Musk informed his millions of followers that he has no plans to sell any more shares.
Today’s sale is the fourth major sale of Tesla stock by Musk that appears to be related to the Twitter acquisition. Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion, although he secured additional financing in the form of loans from outside sources. Those loans have a total interest rate of about $1 billion per year — a significant cost for the company.
See also: Twitter: Musk replaces several members of the legal team
Twitter's current financial situation is unknown, as the company has not released any figures, but it is said that there has been a drastic drop in advertising revenue, with advertisers pulling ads from the platform. This is certainly causing problems for Twitter.
With Twitter facing additional costs and declining revenue, Elon Musk is looking to increase revenue streams for his new venture. This is evident in the new account verification system that now requires payment. This could cover some of the revenue, although it probably won't have a big impact compared to the additional debt and lost revenue that Twitter is currently managing.
Source: electrek.co
