Stocks gains for Tesla despite Musk not following advice of Twitter followers
Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk has disposed of more than 4.5 million company shares so far this week in his first sale in over five years. The move came after another bombshell tweet that dragged Tesla stock down by about 12%.
The eccentric Tesla boss revealed that he had exercised $2.15 million in stock options at a price of $6.24 each, costing a total of $13.4 billion on Monday, and then sold 934,000 shares at varying prices. He ultimately collected more than $1.1 billion from the sales, according to the two filings posted on Wednesday evening by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The move was reportedly attributed to helping the billionaire pay taxes on options he received nearly a decade ago.
According to the documents, Musk holds 170.5 million shares in addition to the 2.15 million he offloaded earlier this week.
The latest sale of 4.5 million shares therefore amounts to around 3.5% of his total holdings in the electric-car maker.
Last weekend, the billionaire called on his Twitter subscribers to help decide if he should sell 10% of his roughly 23% stake in Tesla amid a swirling debate about increasing taxes on unrealized stock gains to help curb tax avoidance among the ultra-wealthy.
Nearly 60% of the 3.5 million Twitter users who participated in the poll voted in favor of Musk’s proposed sale.
Current and former board members, including chairwoman Robyn Denholm and Elon’s brother Kimbal Musk, also unloaded hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Tesla shares ahead of the Twitter poll.
Tesla shares dropped 5% on Monday, and nearly 12% on Tuesday. On Wednesday, the company’s stocks gained 4.3%, and rose over 2% in after-hours trading on the news that Musk had sold some of his shares.
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