Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and also the owner of Twitter, reportedly sold roughly $4 billion worth of Tesla shares. According to SEC documents published on Tuesday, Musk, who spent $44 billion on Twitter, sold 19.5 million shares of his electric car company between November 4 and November 8.
In August, he sold $7 billion worth of Tesla shares to help pay for his failed attempt to acquire Twitter. Musk has sold almost $19 billion in Tesla stock since April, including the sales reported on Tuesday, most likely to pay for his portion of the Twitter purchase.
Companies including United Airlines, General Motors, REI, General Mills, and Audi have all pulled their advertising from the social media platform in recent weeks due to Twitter’s rocky takeover.
Twitter’s “huge loss in revenue,” according to Musk, is to be expected given the company’s reliance on advertising.
Though Musk had previously indicated he was done selling Tesla shares, the news that he is still doing so has frustrated some market watchers.
“Our fear heading into the closing days of the agreement was that Musk was going to be compelled to sell additional Tesla stock to fund the disastrous Twitter deal and eventually, those fears came true,” wrote Daniel Ives of Wedbush.
For Musk, who has claimed numerous times in the past year that he is “done selling Tesla stock,” this is another “boy who cried wolf” moment in which he loses the trust of investors and his fans.
Almost all of Musk’s fortune is invested in Tesla Inc. His fortune fell below $200 billion on Tuesday, yet Forbes still ranks him as the wealthiest individual in the world.
Tesla Inc. shares dropped another 6% on Wednesday, bringing their annual loss to nearly 50%.
A group of banks, including Morgan Stanley, had been enlisted by Musk to assist fund the Twitter acquisition. According to Ives’ calculations, his initial stake in the deal was worth around $15.5 billion.
However, if equity investors pulled out, Elon Musk would have to find new ones or invest more of his own money to keep the project afloat.
Ives wrote, “Since Musk bought Twitter for all the world to see, it has been an absolute debacle from all angles, from the 50% layoffs and then bringing back some workers, to the head-scratching verification roll-out to users, which many are pushing back against, to the constant tweeting against this political firestorm backdrop, and now…..selling more TSLA stock.” Asking, “When will this madness stop?”
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