A Tesla car parked in one of its showrooms
Tesla and Twitter witness drop in shares as Musk’s legal issues grow. Source: The New Indian Express

Tesla stocks tumble as Elon Musk revives Twitter offer

The share price of Tesla Motors suffered huge losses in the past few days as Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk announced his decision to reopen the offer for buying a majority stake in social networking platform Twitter Inc.

Elon Musk who is part of Tesla’s board of directors since 2004 is one of the largest shareholders in the electric motor vehicle company. Tesla Inc shares listed on Nasdaq lost more than 10 dollars per share in just the last two trading days which is more than a 1.5 percent decrease in value.

The share price record states that the stock has witnessed massive depreciation of 34 percent in its value since Elon Musk firstly announced his decision to purchase Twitter in April 2022. Following the purchase of a 9.1 percent stake in Twitter Inc earlier this year Elon Musk in April 2022 offered to purchase a majority stake in Twitter Inc for 43 billion dollars and convert the publicly traded company into a private company. Even though the board of directors was not first comfortable with the offer, pressure from shareholders and other stakeholders forced them to accept the offer. The takeover deal of Twitter by Elon Musk later went through many ups and downs which in the end led to Elon Musk backing off from the offer and Twitter filed a lawsuit against Elon Musk.

In the case of falling Tesla stocks, analysts suggest that the recent revival of the offer by Elon Musk is not the only reason. Elon Musk in April 2022 and August 2022 offloaded Tesla shares worth 15 billion dollars from his portfolio. A large majority of this money was reportedly planned to be utilized for fulfilling financial obligations related to acquiring a majority stake in Twitter Inc. Stock analysts believe that the decision of Elon Musk to offload shares in his own company might also be a reason for the fall in stock prices of Tesla Motors.

As of August 9, Elon Musk holds 465 million which is worth more than $110 billion. The founder of SpaceX will have to offload additional Tesla Shares worth 2 to 7 billion dollars to fully finance the Twitter deal.

Elon Musk also has other options such as Private funding series and taking loans using shares to name a few.

We should also wait and see how the revival of the takeover deal will have any impact on the ongoing lawsuit proceedings against Elon Musk which was filed by Twitter a few months ago.