Elon Musk sells nearly 8 million Tesla shares amid ongoing Twitter bot drama
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has unloaded another 7.9 million shares of his electric car company for $6.88 billion, indicating that he is still hustling to raise money for his $44 billion Twitter takeover amid the ongoing bot drama.
The latest batch of sales, made over the course of several days starting on Friday, were disclosed in a series of filings with the Securities Exchange Commission late Tuesday night. It comes on the heels of Tesla’s annual shareholders meeting, which was held in Austin, Texas, at the beginning of the month.
Tesla and SpaceX Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk speaks at the SATELLITE Conference and Exhibition in Washington on March 9, 2020. (Susan Walsh/)
Twitter in April revealed that it had agreed to sell to Musk at a cost of $54.20 per share. In the weeks that followed, the world’s richest man sold 9.6 million shares of Tesla, raising $8.5 billion in a bid to fund his takeover of the company. At the time, he noted that “no further” sales had been planned.
Tesla investor Sawyer Merritt on Tuesday tweeted details of Musk’s activity between Aug. 5 and Aug. 9, and then asked the 51-year-old billionaire whether he was now done pawning off pieces of his electric car company. In response, Musk pointed to his upcoming legal battle with Twitter as the reason for the recent surprise sale.
“Yes,” he wrote. “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.”
Tesla vehicles are parked at a company location in Littleton, Colo. (David Zalubowski/)
Shares of Tesla rose almost 2% before the opening bell Wednesday while shares of Twitter Inc. — up 16% in the past month with most believing Musk faces long-shot odds of success in court — climbed another 3%.
In the weeks since Twitter announced its sale, Musk has repeatedly tried to back out of the deal. In May, he took to the social media platform to proclaim his efforts to take the company private would be on hold until CEO Parag Agrawal publicly proves that less than 5% of users are bots or spam accounts.
Twitter has repeatedly disclosed to the Securities and Exchange Commission an estimate that fewer than 5% of its user accounts are fake or spam, adding a disclaimer suggesting it could be higher. The company added that Musk waived his rights to further due diligence when he signed on to the takeover back in April.
Last month, Twitter sued the billionaire in a bid to force him to follow through with the deal. The company in court argued Musk is deliberately trying to tank the deal and is using the battle over bots as an excuse because the acquisition no longer serves his interests.
With News Wire Services
