Elon Musk Sold $8.5 Billion of Tesla Shares Day After $44 Billion Twitter Deal
Written by
Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy
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This article was updated to reflect Musk’s new share sales.
Elon Musk sold a total of more than $8.5 billion of Tesla shares in a series of trades on April 26, 27 and 28, according to Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings.
Musk has now offloaded more than $25 billion worth of stock in Tesla during the last six months, Bloomberg reported.
The sales came one day after the Twitter board agreed to Musk’s $44 billion bid at $54.20 per share to acquire the social media platform. Musk secured $46.5 billion for the acquisition, which includes $25.5 billion from Morgan Stanley Senior Funding and $21 billion in equity financing, according to an SEC filing, as GOBankingRates previously reported.
“No further TSLA sales planned after today,” Musk tweeted April 28.
With a $252.2 billion fortune, Musk is the world’s richest person, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. However, the recent drop in Tesla shares has shaved off $18 billion from his net worth this year, even as the company reported better-than-expected earnings earlier this month, Bloomberg reported.
Tesla stock was down 0.45% on April 28, but was up 1.7% in pre-market trading April 29. It’s down 20% in the past month.
Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives said that a good portion of Musk’s Tesla shares will be spoken for/used as collateral for this deal which is putting short-term pressure on the stock, which in turn, “has put a black cloud over Tesla’s stock in the near-term as the Twitter financing component for Musk is now front and center for the bears.”
Ives added, “As we have said before, the Twitter transaction was never ideal for Tesla investors as the stock will now ultimately bear the burden of acquiring Twitter through its equity-based financing mechanics.”
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