Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk sold shares worth $963.2 million on Thursday, as per filings made with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
What Happened: Musk sold 934,091 shares of Tesla and also exercised options to purchase 2.17 million shares of the automaker at $6.24.
As per the filings, the shares were “sold solely to satisfy the reporting person’s tax withholding obligations.”
Why It Matters: At the beginning of the month, Musk sold Tesla shares worth $1.01 billion and exercised options to buy 2.1 million shares.
Musk polled his Twitter audience in early November if he should sell 10 percent of his holdings in Tesla.
The technology sector dominated these sales with $41 billion in sales across the market, as per the Journal.
Musk’s 31-day total sales amount to 11.0 million shares, 64.7 percent of target. The sales amount to $11.8 billion at an average price of $1,073, according to a Twitter post by Gary Black, the managing partner at The Future Fund LLC, an SEC-registered investment advisor.
Black said he hoped Musk will stop allowing Tesla shorts to “front run” his sales each week. “No other CEO selling this amount of stock would enable HFs to jump in front of sales,” Black said in a separate tweet.
Notably, the Tesla CEO does not receive a salary and is compensated instead through a stock options plan.
