Musk sells nearly US$7 billion worth of Tesla stock in case the Twitter deal goes through

Musk sells nearly US$7 billion worth of Tesla stock in case the Twitter deal goes through
Elon Musk photo, Twitter logos and U.S. dollar banknotes are seen in this illustration, August 10, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration

Elon Musk has been in a pretty hairy court battle with Twitter after trying to pull out of the deal to buy the social media giant unless it proved that less than 5% of its accounts were fake. Twitter then sued Musk to try to get him to follow through with the merger.

In case that deal does go through, though, this week, Musk has sold around 7.92 million shares or US$6.9 billion worth of Tesla stock to fund the potential Twitter purchase. This selloff was called out by a Tesla investor on Twitter who wrote, “are you done selling?” because it comes after Musk sold off about US$8.4 billion worth of stock back in April and said he didn’t plan on selling anymore to finance the deal.

But this time round, Musk took to Twitter to explain that it was important to avoid any kind of sudden emergency sale if he did end up having to buy the social media company. He also said that if the Twitter deal didn’t end up going through, he’d buy stock in Tesla again.

Key Comments:

“No further TSLA sales planned after today,” tweeted Musk after selling off about US$8.5 billion in Tesla stock back in April.

“In the (hopefully unlikely) event that Twitter forces this deal to close *and* some equity partners don’t come through, it is important to avoid an emergency sale of Tesla stock,” said Musk in a Tweet on Tuesday evening.