Tesla CEO Elon Musk has sold $3.95 billion worth of his shares in the automaker, reveals filings with the SEC on Tuesday. The share sales happened after the closing of Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of Twitter.
Prior to the notice of his 19.5 million shares of Tesla sold, Musk held roughly 25% of Tesla stock and options, reports CNBC.
Musk closed the Twitter deal on October 28, 2022, backed by financing from third-party partners including banks and friends.
According to Gary Black, Managing Partner of The Future Fund, he believes the Tesla share sale is likely to repay bridge loans that may have been needed to close the deal.
“@elonmusk sold nearly 20M $TSLA shares for $3.9B on Fri/Mon/Tues. IMO, he likely needs the funds to pay back any bridge loan he needed to close the deal. Since we know he raised [third-party] equity as well, it’s possible he’s done selling. I doubt he’s selling to finance TWTR’s cash burn,” said Black.
Twitter is currently losing $4 million per day, according to Musk, who has cut about half the staff at the social network.
Back in 2021, Musk sold nearly $21 billion worth of Tesla shares, while in 2022 he sold over $8 billion worth in the spring and nearly $7 billion worth in August, which the latter was to help pay taxes, according to the SpaceX CEO.
As of writing, it’s unclear whether Musk is done selling shares of Tesla. Stay tuned for updates.