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Tesla (TSLA, $177.59) boss Elon Musk has sold another 19.5 million shares of the electric car maker worth $3.95 billion, filings with the US financial watchdog show. The news comes less than two weeks after the world's richest man completed his $44bn takeover of social media platform Twitter.
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Musk sold almost $22 billion worth of Tesla shares in 2021, a year when the stock jumped over 50%. This year, he sold over $8 billion worth of stock in April and roughly $7 billion in August. In August, Tesla shareholders approved a three-for-one stock split, which is behind part of the fall in the value of the shares.
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The sale came just weeks after Tesla reported $3.3 billion in profit and $21.45 billion in revenue for the third quarter – falling short of Wall Street expectations – which caused a 4% drop on the day. Tesla’s value has dropped 46% this year, but Musk’s net worth remains just under $200 billion.
Why it matters
Analysts had widely expected Musk to sell more Tesla shares to finance the Twitter deal even though the world's richest man had asserted several times that he was done selling Tesla stock. The billionaire last month closed the deal with $13 billion in loans from banks and a $33.5 billion equity commitment, which included his 9.6% Twitter stake worth $4 billion and $7.1 billion from investors including Oracle Corp (ORCL, $75.66) co-founder Larry Ellison and Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal.
