Elon Musk Offloads More Tesla Shares After Selling a Lot Worth $5 Billion

Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk disclosed a sale of additional 639,737 shares of the electric-car maker, regulatory filings showed on Friday, after offloading about $5 billion (roughly Rs. 37,211 crore) worth of stock following a poll of his followers on Twitter.

Musk sold 587,638 shares held by his trust on November 11 in multiple transactions at prices ranging from $1,056.03 (roughly Rs. 78,600) to $1,087.88 (roughly Rs. 80,990), according to one of the filings.

A second filing showed that Musk sold an additional 52,099 shares held by his trust at prices ranging from 1,088.01 (roughly Rs. 80,990) to $1,104.15 (roughly Rs. 82,200).

Musk, the world’s richest person and Tesla’s top shareholder, tweeted last weekend that he would sell 10 percent of his stock if users of the social media platform approved the move. Days after Musk disposed $5 billion of the stock, or 3 percent of his total holdings, the first such move since 2016.

In the first round of share sale, filings showed Musk’s trust sold nearly 3.6 million shares in Tesla, worth around $4 billion (roughly Rs. 29,774 crore), while he also sold another 934,000 shares for $1.1 billion (roughly Rs. 8,188 crore) to cover tax obligations after exercising options to acquire nearly 2.2 million shares.

Prior to the sales, Musk owned about 23 percent stake in Tesla, including stock options.

Musk had previously said that he would have to exercise a large number of stock options in the next three months, which would create a big tax bill. Selling some of his stock could free up funds to pay the taxes.

© Thomson Reuters 2021