Elon Musk has sold millions more shares in Tesla, according to three separate
forms filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission this month.
CEO Musk sold 19.5 million shares of the electric vehicle maker, worth $3.95 billion, from Nov. 4 to Nov. 8, the filings show.
The share sell-off comes after Musk took over social media platform Twitter in a $44 billion deal last month.
Musk sold $8.4 billion in shares in April, and at the time
wrote on Twitter that there were “no further TSLA sales planned after today.” However, in August, he sold just under $7 billion of his Tesla stock to help fund the Twitter purchase, along with financing from a string of major banks, including Morgan Stanley, the Bank of America, and Barclays.
In August, Musk
stated on Twitter that he sold the shares “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.”
Musk was embroiled in a legal battle with Twitter executives at the time over the number of fake bot accounts on the platform and had attempted to step away from the deal.
Overall, the businessman has sold more than $19 billion worth of Tesla stock since April, when he disclosed his stake in Twitter, including those in Tuesday’s filings.
The majority of Musk’s wealth is tied up in shares of Tesla, which have dropped by more than 50 percent since the start of this year. Despite this, he is still the world’s richest person, with a net worth of $197.4 billion, according to the Forbes real-time billionaire
list.
Changes Underway at Twitter
Musk has initiated a string of changes to Twitter since taking over the company, including laying off multiple employees and changing how user accounts are verified. He has also launched an $8 per month subscription fee for Twitter’s “Blue” service in the United States.
The Tesla CEO has defended what he called “Twitter’s reduction in force,” posting on Friday that he was left with no choice as the platform is “losing over $4 million a day.”
“Everyone [who] exited was offered 3 months of severance, which is 50 percent more than legally required,” Musk
said. Earlier, the businessman had also stated that Twitter has “had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists.”
He added that the groups were “trying to destroy free speech in America.”
Some major companies, including General Mills, General Motors, Pfizer, and United Airlines have paused advertising on the site amid concerns over the future of the platform under Musk’s leadership. In response, Musk has
threatened to “name and shame” the advertisers who are succumbing to the advertiser boycotts.
Separately, Tesla is voluntarily recalling over 40,000 of its Model S and Model X vehicles, according to a filing earlier this month with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The recall is owing to concerns over a potential loss of power steering assist connected to a recent firmware update.
