Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk sold 7.9 million shares raising $6.9 billion worth of sales in the electric vehicle maker, saying the funds may be used to finance a potential Twitter deal if he loses a legal battle against the social media platform.
The sales from Friday through to Tuesday were disclosed in a series of filings with the securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday night. They are the first sale of Telsa shares by Musk since April, when he sold 9.6 million shares, raising $8.5 billion at the time.
Those sales came after Musk had reached a deal to buy Twitter for $44 billion. He later changed his mind about going through with the deal, arguing that Twitter Management did not disclose information about how many user accounts were spam accounts rather than accounts used by actual people. Twitter sued Musk to force him to go ahead with the deal as agreed in the April deal.
On Tuesday, after Musk’s latest stock sales were revealed, Tesla fans asked if he was done selling, Musk replied: “Yes. 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 did not specify which equity partners he referred to that would abandon plans to finance a Twitter take-private transaction with him. He also said he would buy some of his shares back if he is not forced to go through with the Twitter acquisition.
If the Twitter deal doesn’t go through, he will consider creating his own social platform, X.com, he added.
Source: Briefly, CNN Business, Reuters, CNBC, Bloomberg, image from Reuters