Elon Musk sells nearly $7 billion in Tesla shares with Twitter trial looming

With a lot of the world’s richest man’s wealth tied up in shares of his electrical automobile firm, Tesla is part of the deal Elon doesn’t need to do anymore for extra causes than just some subpoenas. Six SEC filings (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) revealed Elon Musk offered extra Tesla shares over the previous couple of days, which is stunning given Musk’s tweet saying, “No additional TSLA gross sales deliberate after at the moment,” after he offered off $8.4 billion price in April.

Tesla investor Sawyer Merritt tweeted a rely of Musk’s exercise between August fifth and August ninth, exhibiting he offered 7,924,107 shares price about $6.9 billion. Simply earlier than 11PM ET, Elon responded on Twitter, citing the looming trial in opposition to Twitter as a proof for the brand new plan.

Musk offered these shares earlier this 12 months to assist finance the acquisition of Twitter, and now that he’s attempting to exit the association, they’re going to battle it out in a Delaware courtroom beginning on October seventeenth. Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal isn’t taking the bait on Elon’s problem for a public debate, plus there’s no phrase of any pending settlement. Musk now says he has a cause to organize for “the (hopefully unlikely) occasion that Twitter forces this deal to shut *and* some fairness companions don’t come by.” If that occurs, Musk mentioned, he’s attempting to keep away from an emergency sale of Tesla inventory.

Precisely how buyers will react to phrase that Musk is finished promoting (once more) is unknown; nevertheless, the value of Tesla shares stayed flat at round $850 in after-hours buying and selling. Wedbush analyst Dan Ives tweets, “Musk promoting TSLA inventory after he mentioned no extra gross sales will lead the Avenue to give attention to possibilities of Twitter deal taking place and Musk making ready money portion … This inventory sale will increase a whole lot of dialog on Avenue for bulls/bears within the morning.”