Elon Musk sells Tesla stocks worth $4.8 billion on Tuesday after the Twitter board agreed to the $44 billion deal.
According to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Musk sold 5.3 million shares of Tesla stock for an average price of $905.30. The sales account for barely 3.1 percent of the Tesla shares he owned outright at the start of Tuesday’s trading session, and less than 2% of his overall Tesla holdings when stock options he owns are factored in.
Elon tweeted “no further TSLA sales planned after today” after the sale.
The purpose of the transaction is not disclosed in the documents, but it appears to be to generate funds for his planned acquisition of Twitter and takeover of the firm.
Musk’s Tesla stock sales were significant enough to exert negative pressure on the stock. Before Tuesday, the number of shares sold constituted 20% of the typical trading value in Tesla shares this year. Tesla shares also lost 12.2 percent of their value during Tuesday’s trading, the largest one-day decline in Tesla stock since September 2020. Other investors went on a selling spree in response to the stock’s collapse, with 45 million shares changing hands, nearly double the number trading the day before.
Musk is anticipated to utilize his vast Tesla assets, which have made him the world’s richest person, to fund his purchase of Twitter, but that doesn’t imply he’ll have to sell all of them to cover the entire purchase price. Instead, he can borrow money by using the shares as collateral.
Only time will be able to reveal his future plans and the details of the massive purchase. The world’s richest man seems to be on track to pay the purchase.