Musk sells Tesla stock to avoid Twitter fire sale
Elon Musk offloaded $6.9 billion worth of stock in Tesla Inc., saying he wanted to avoid a sudden sale in the event he’s forced to go ahead with his deal to acquire Twitter Inc.
Tesla’s chief executive officer sold about 7.92 million shares on August 5, according to regulatory filings released after US markets closed Tuesday. Musk tweeted that he was done selling and would buy shares in the electric-car maker if the Twitter deal doesn’t close.
“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,” Musk wrote.
Tesla rose 3.4% to $ 879 before the start of regular trading Wednesday, while Twitter jumped 4.3% to $44.69.
Musk has now dumped about $32 billion worth of Tesla shares since November. The world’s richest person said less than four months ago he had no further stock sales planned and has attempted since then to terminate his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter. The social media company has sued to force Musk to go through with the deal, and a trial is scheduled for October.
“He is cashing up for Twitter,” said Charu Chanana, a strategist at Saxo Capital Markets Pte in Singapore, who believes Musk may be trying to take advantage of Tesla shares rebounding about 35% since late May. “The bear market rally has started to falter, and further repricing of Fed expectations could mean more pain for equities ahead, especially in tech.”
Investors had been skeptical that Musk, 51, was done offloading Tesla stock, with 68% of 1,562 respondents to an MLIV Pulse survey saying last month he was likely to sell more regardless of what happens with the Twitter deal.
“Musk said at the Tesla shareholder meeting that any weakness in the share price was a buying opportunity, and then 24 hours later started selling stock himself,” said Jim Dixon, a senior equity sales trader at Mirabaud Securities. It’s “very unlikely” Musk is done offloading the stock now, Dixon said.
Tesla’s market fortunes have been tied to the Twitter deal since Musk made his surprise overtures in April. The carmaker’s shares initially slumped out of concerns the pursuit would distract him and over the risk associated with the margin loan he intended to take out against his Tesla stake. The stock rallied when Musk abandoned the borrowing plan and in the weeks after he said he wanted to terminate the transaction.
When Musk dropped plans to partially fund the Twitter purchase with a Tesla margin loan, it increased the size of the equity component of the deal to $33.5 billion. He’s previously announced having secured $7.1 billion of equity commitments from investors including billionaire Larry Ellison, Sequoia Capital and Binance.
Over the weekend, Musk tweeted that if Twitter provided its method of sampling accounts to determine the number of bots on its platform, “the deal should proceed on original terms.” The Twitter deal included a provision that if it fell apart, the party breaking the agreement would pay a termination fee of $1 billion under certain circumstances. Legal experts have debated whether the conflict over spam bots is enough to allow Musk to walk away from the deal. Musk’s disposals of Tesla stock over the past 10 months started after he polled Twitter users on whether he should trim his stake. He still owns about 14.8% of the company and remains by far the largest stakeholder, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Musk’s $250.2 billion fortune is the world’s largest, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, though his wealth has shrunk by about $20.1 billion this year as Tesla’s stock has declined.