Tesla CEO Elon Musk has sold shares of the electric vehicle maker worth $4 billion, according to US Securities and Exchange filings from Thursday. This comes days after the billionaire sealed the deal with Twitter to buy the social media giant. In a tweet, Musk said “No further TSLA sales planned after today.” He was responding to a Twitter user on the Tesla stock sale.
Elon Musk carried out the sale through his trust and sold the shares on Tuesday and Wednesday this week, the filings show. Musk sold a total of 4.4 million shares. In after market trading Tesla stock was down 0.45 per cent at $877.51 apiece on Friday in Asian market hours. Year-to-date Tesla’s stock is down over 25 per cent. While Twitter’s shares were up 1 per cent at $49.11 apiece in after market trade. Year-to-date Twitter stock is up 15 per cent.
Wall Street analysts expected the billionaire to sell stock in the electric vehicle carmaker to finance some portion of the $44 billion deal to buy Twitter. Of the total deal price, Musk, who is also the chief executive of SpaceX, said he plans to fund almost half of the deal amount (about $21 billion) through equity, according to an exchange filing.
The rest will be financed through loans that various Wall Street and overseas banks suchs as Morgan Stanley and Barclays have guaranteed. Tesla’s Chief Executive Officer, who is currently the richest person on earth, has reiterated time and again that he does not own wealth except through his Tesla stock. As of earlier this year, Musk owned a 17 per cent stake in Tesla.
Earlier this week, in a hasty U-turn, Twitter’s board accepted Musk’s offered deal to take Twitter private. Analysts were sceptical of a deal as Twitter had earlier adopted a so-called poison pill strategy to avoid a hostile takeover of the company. Musk, on his part, secured the funds for the deal through which he plans to make Twitter a balanced ‘digital Town Hall’.
Twitter’s management has accepted the offer but the deal still needs a nod from Twitter shareholders and regulatory authorities. Musk would have to pay Twitter a termination fee of $1 billion if he fails to secure enough funding to complete his deal, a regulatory filing showed.