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Tesla CEO Elon Musk was selling company stock.
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Now investors know one reason
Tesla
Stocks Are Going Down — CEO Elon Musk He had a lot of stock to sell.
Musk revealed Tesla share sales (Ticker: TSLA) Thursday night 4s shape Submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Form 4 is used to disclose the sale by company management and other company insiders.
Musk sold 4.4 million shares of Tesla stock worth $4 billion, likely box part who bought it
Twitter
(TWTR). Musk sold his shares on April 26 and 27, according to Form 4, which is usually filed within days of the sale.
Earlier this week, the social media platform’s board of directors accepted Musk’s $54.20 bid to buy Twitter. The entity that Musk formed to buy Twitter will be funded with approximately $25 billion in debt and $21 billion in equity. Analysts and investors have been hotly debating how Musk will fund the equity portion.
It turns out that part of this amount was funded by the sale of shares of Musk’s Tesla.
He said on Twitter Thursday evening that he had no plans to sell any more shares.
That may be a relief to Tesla investors. Musk’s potential sales have been a drag on Tesla stock according to Wedbush analyst Dan Ives. Tesla stock is down about 12% since Musk’s offer was accepted. The
And
It fell 0.2% and 1% over the same period.
The $4 billion is significantly less than the total $21 billion share of stock listed in Twitter’s merger documents. It could mean that some other source will be involved in the deal in order to raise the remaining $21 billion in equity required for the purchase. The rest of the funds could come from a combination of Musk’s money on hand – from cryptocurrency gains or something – existing Twitter contributors who remain with Musk, or partners willing to invest alongside Musk.
Tesla stock fell 0.5% Thursday, to close at $877.51 after trading as low as $821.70. The stock was down 2.6% in after-hours trading at $854.50.
Musk still owns about 168 million Tesla shares, not counting the more than 100 million stock options granted as part of the 2018 compensation package.
Musk does not like to use middlemen to organize secondary sales. He sold his inventory in about 140 separate smaller deals. This is not how large blocks of shares are usually sold, but this is how Musk sold shares back in 2021. These sales were related to the exercise of options and the acceleration of tax payments on unrealized capital gains.
Write to Al Root at [email protected]
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