After the Twitter acquisition, Elon Musk sells Tesla shares valued at least $3.95 billion
Tesla CEO Elon Musk sold additional shares of his electric car company after closing a $44 billion purchase of Twitter.
Musk closed the deal on Oct. 28, with equity and debt financing from a wide range of friends and institutions. Before he sold shares today, Elon Musk owned about 25% of Tesla between stock and options.
Following the completion of his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, Elon Musk has sold at least an additional $3.95 billion worth of shares in his electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla.
Musk reportedly sold 19.5 million more shares in Tesla, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and made public on Tuesday.
Tesla shares valued at about $22 billion were sold by Musk in 2021, a year in which the stock appreciated by over 50%. He sold stock worth about $8 billion in April and almost $7 billion in August of this year.
The Tesla CEO enlisted partners, including equity investors Binance, Ron Baron’s BAMCO, Andreessen Horowitz, former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, and Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz, in addition to investing billions of his own funds to take to finance the deal or to roll their existing shares into his holding company for Twitter.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn) has called for an investigation into the national security implications of Saudi Arabia’s stake in Twitter following Musk’s take-private deal.
Musk informed his followers on August 9 that he has stopped selling Tesla stock in order to raise money for a potential Twitter acquisition. In a tweet, he stated, “It is critical to avoid an emergency sale of Tesla stock in the (hopefully improbable) case that Twitter forces this deal to close and some equity partners don’t come through.”
The acquisition, which Musk offered and accepted in April, was still being contested in court by the social media business at the time.
Musk has summoned dozens of Tesla engineers to Twitter to help him with code reviews and other tasks since finalizing the deal.
Tesla shares are down 46%, wiping out a year-to-date loss of approximately 33% for the Nasdaq Composite. However, he’s still the world’s richest person with a net worth of close to $200 billion, according to Forbes.
At a conference last week, Musk told hedge fund manager Ron Baron that his “workload went up from about, I don’t know, 78 hours a week to probably 120.”
Musk, who is also the CEO of SpaceX, claimed on stage that managing Twitter will be far simpler than running his other businesses if it was “put on the proper course.” Although Musk hasn’t named the new CEO of Twitter, he has hinted that his position as the company’s only director and “Chief Twit” is only temporary.