Elon Musk disclosed an extra $4.5 billion in Tesla Inc. stock sales in fresh regulatory filings on Friday, bringing his total stock sales to more than $8.5 billion since his deal to buy Twitter Inc. According to the new filings, Tesla’s chief executive officer sold more than 5 million shares on April 28. These came after the company said late Thursday that it had sold 4.4 million shares in the two days prior. During the last six months, Musk has sold approximately $25 billion worth of Tesla stock.
The latest revelations follow Musk’s announcement on Thursday that “no additional Tesla sales are planned after today.” If other sales occurred on Thursday, he still has time to file more Form 4s revealing them.
As of 10:25 a.m. Friday in New York, Tesla shares were up 4.9 percent to $920.29, reversing this week’s severe fall.
With Musk negotiating $25.5 billion in debt and margin-loan financing from lenders including Morgan Stanley, the Twitter deal is set to be one of the largest leveraged buyouts in history. If the agreement were to fall apart, the party who broke it would be compelled to pay a $1 billion termination fee under certain situations.
Musk’s pursuit of Twitter has once again demonstrated how much Tesla’s value is based on how committed and invested its CEO is in the company. He has been the company’s CEO since 2008 and its largest stakeholder for a long time.
Late last year, Tesla’s price plummeted when Musk sold more than $16 billion worth of stock, his first in more than five years. The sales began in November, after Musk asked Twitter users if he should sell his stake.
According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Musk is the world’s richest person with a fortune of $252.2 billion. Even though the carmaker has posted better-than-expected earnings and established new operations in Germany and Texas, the current drop in Tesla shares has chopped $18 billion off his net worth this year.
