UNITED STATES: Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla Inc., sold at least $3.95 billion worth of the electric vehicle maker’s shares two days after he completed the takeover of Twitter Inc.
According to regulatory filings made on Tuesday in New York, Musk sold 19.5 million shares—his first sales since August. The filings did not indicate that the transactions were arranged ahead of time.
After selling a portion of his stake in Tesla, Musk, the richest man in the world, had about $20 billion in cash. However, a calculation shows that he would have needed to raise an additional $2 to $3 billion to finance the Twitter deal.
Analysts had anticipated that Musk would sell more Tesla shares before the most recent stock sale. After finishing share sales in April and August, Musk had previously declared that no additional sales were planned.
Since Musk made a bid for Twitter in April, Tesla’s market value has decreased by nearly half, and his wealth has fallen by $70 billion.
Musk, the billionaire, declared in August that he was no longer selling Tesla stock. As the company has struggled for the majority of this year due to the broader risk-off market trend, Tesla Inc. reversed all of its gains from the previous 17 months.
He warned a Twitter follower against conducting an “emergency sell” of Tesla shares in case he was forced to drop the social media network acquisition and had trouble finding new equity partners.
However, others had predicted that the billionaire would increase his stock sales to support the purchase.
According to information gathered, he has sold nearly $36 billion worth of shares in the last year, about half of that amount since he revealed his plan to acquire Twitter.
For the acquisition, Musk promised to give $46.5 billion in equity and debt funding, covering the $44 billion acquisition cost as well as the closing charges. Banks pledged to offer $13 billion in debt financing, including Morgan Stanley (MS.N) and Bank of America Corp. (BAC.N).
In late October, Musk took over Twitter in a $44 billion deal and ousted the firm’s top executives following a protracted spat between the richest man in the world and the important social media company.
Later, in early November, he announced an $8 monthly fee to verify user accounts, claiming the move would address the platform’s bot and troll problems while generating new money for the business.
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