Electric vehicle maker Elon Musk has sold $6.9 billion of Tesla Inc shares, saying the move was to prepare funds to complete the potential Twitter deal, in the event he loses the lawsuit with Twitter and is compelled to carry on the acquisition of the social media platform.
Musk had walked away from his April 25 agreement to buy Twitter for $44 billion over the claim that the company has made a misleading representation of the number of spam and bots on the service. A move that made Twitter sue the billionaire to force him to complete the transaction.
Following concerns that sprang up over the recent sale of 7.92 million Tesla shares, Musk responded in a tweet, saying he wanted to avoid emergency stock sales if he is made to complete the $44 billion takeover of Twitter, which he walked away from. Musk said in a tweet “in the (hopefully unlikely) event that Twitter forces this deal to close *and* some equity partners don’t come through, it is important to avoid an emergency sale of Tesla stock.”
Musk sold $8.5 billion worth of Tesla shares in April and had said at the time there were no further sales planned. Following his statement, jurists gave the opinion that Musk is likely to sell some more Tesla shares if forced to complete the acquisition or settle the dispute with a stiff penalty.
Based on Reuters calculations, Elon Musk now owns just under 15% of Tesla with his 155.04 million shareholdings.
What you need to know
Tesla reported remarkably high earnings on July 20 making the shares of the company rise by nearly 15%, also helped by the Biden administration’s climate bill that, if passed, would lift the cap on tax credits for electric vehicles.
Musk wants Twitter to provide its method of sampling accounts to determine the number of bots and how they are confirmed to be real so that they can proceed with the deal on original terms.
Musk has now sold around $ 32 billion worth of stock in Tesla over the past 10 months.
