Elon Musk sells another $1B in Tesla stock, selling spree now up to $10B
Tesla CEO Elon Musk disclosed Tuesday that he sold another 934,091 shares of the electric vehicle maker, worth some $1.05 billion, bringing his total selling spree this month to nearly $10 billion worth of Tesla stock.
Musk — the wealthiest man in the world, worth some $300 billion — made the sales after exercising options tied to his 2012 compensation contract to buy 2.15 million shares, according to the filings with Securities and Exchange Commission.
The sell-off started after Musk asked his Twitter followers to decide whether he should sell 10 percent of his Tesla holdings.
The Twitter crowd voted in favor of offloading, but Musk had already started selling shares before he asked the question, more disclosures revealed.
He’s still about 7.9 million shares shy of meeting his promise to sell 10 percent of this stake, but the latest sales put him across the halfway mark.
The selling spree has put some pressure on Tesla stock. Musk, after all, is the biggest shareholder of the company and the liquidation of any sizeable stake would likely send the stock downward.
Tesla stock was down more than 1 percent in premarket trading Wednesday after falling over 4 percent on Tuesday.
The stock has dropped about 9 percent since Musk’s Nov. 8 Twitter poll. Shares are still up 57 percent since Jan. 1, though, more than double the S&P 500’s gains over that same period.
Musk had previously warned that he would likely be selling stock before the end of the year to cover the tax bill on his 2012 Tesla stock options, which are set to expire next year.
The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that Musk faced a $3.5 billion federal tax bill on his options, though that bill would have been even bigger had Tesla stock not tumbled down from its all-time high after he tweeted his plans to sell.
The stock drop ended up saving Musk almost half a billion dollars, according to the Journal’s calculations.
