According to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission Wednesday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has sold some 22 million company shares worth $3.58 billion in 29 separate transactions over three days, from Monday to Wednesday.
Despite publicly stating twice this year that he wasn’t planning to sell any more of the electric vehicle maker’s shares, Musk has sold, as the filings last month showed, at least $3.95 billion worth of Tesla shares since completing his Twitter takeover worth $44 billion.
That brings the total amount of Tesla stock sales in 2022 to roughly $19 billion.
Neither Musk, who still owns about 424 million shares of Tesla, excluding his management stock options, nor the electric vehicle maker immediately commented on the reason behind the recent sales although many suspect the sales are probably Twitter-related -and Tesla’s investors don’t like it.
Although it’s not always the case when it comes to Tesla shares, the management stock sales can signal weakness ahead for any stock and investors don’t like the stock volatility the sales generate.
After going up 0.1% in after-hours trading Wednesday night, Tesla stock was down about 55% year to date coming into Thursday trading.
Tesla’s shares have gone down by over 50% since Musk announced his intention to buy Twitter for $43 billion in April which means that more than $500 billion has been wiped off Tesla’s $1 trillion market cap in less than a year.
So yes, Musk’s Twitter deal has undoubtedly exacerbated Tesla’s losses tough, in the meantime, all growth stocks have experienced a huge sell-off.
Considering that Musk’s wealth is largely tied to Tesla shares, those losses have also cost Musk the title of world’s richest man according to Forbes which, since Tuesday, is in the hands of the French business magnate, investor, and art collector Bernard Arnault.
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