Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) chief executive Elon Musk has sold shares worth $3.95 billion in the electric-vehicle maker, according to regulatory filings, merely days after he completed the $44-billion deal for Twitter Inc.
The latest sale results in total Tesla shares sold by Musk to about $36 billion since November 2021, leaving him with a close to 14% stake in the world’s highest valuable automaker, based on a Reuters calculation.
Musk disposed of 19.5 million shares between Friday and Tuesday, filings issued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission showed on late Tuesday. Tesla would not instantly reply to a Reuters request for comment on the purpose of the share sale.
Analysts had generally expected Musk to unload more Tesla shares to fund the Twitter deal even though the world’s wealthiest man had stated several times that he was done unloading Tesla stock. He disposed of Tesla shares worth $6.9 billion in August and raised about $20 billion in cash through various stake sales from November 2021 to August.
This would have left him in need to obtain an additional $2 billion to $3 billion to fund the Twitter deal, based on a Reuters calculation.
The billionaire in October completed the deal with $13 billion in loans from banks and a $33.5 billion equity commitment, which included his 9.6% Twitter stake worth $4 billion and $7.1 billion from investors including Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal and Oracle Corp (ORCL.N) co-founder Larry Ellison.
Tesla shares rose by 0.7% to $192.64 in premarket trading. The company has shed nearly half its market value ever since Musk put in a bid for Twitter in April.
