Regulatory filings revealed Tuesday that Elon Musk offloaded $6.9 billion worth of Tesla stock, the first sale he has made of the automaker’s stock since he pulled out of his attempt to buy Twitter.
The shares were sold of August 5th, according to the filing. Musk has now divested roughly $32 billion worth of Tesla stock in the past 10 months. Musk has since stated he sold the stock in the event he is forced to buy Twitter and some equity partners back out. By selling now, he would avoid being forced into selling at a discount under duress.
After Musk sold off over $16 billion in stock last year, in his first sale of company stock in over five years, Tesla stock slumped. At the time Musk has polled his Twitter followers on whether or not he should sell off the stock and pay taxes. When the poll indicated he should, he began selling in November.
Shares are presently up about 35% from their May lows.
With a fortune worth $250.2 billion, Musk sits at the top of the Bloomberg Billionaire’s Index. He has lost about $20 billion this year after Tesla stock fell from its price of around $1200 at the beginning of the year.
Last month Musk announced he would be pulling out of his attempt to buy Twitter for $44 billion. He alleged the company was misleading about its problems with spam bots and fake accounts, and that the number of monetizable users of use to advertisers was substantially lower than represented.
Twitter responded by suing Musk in Delaware Chancery Court, seeking to force the sale, and a trial date has been set for October.
Over the weekend, Musk tweeted that if Twitter provided the method it used to sample accounts and determine the number of bots and how users are confirmed to be real, “the deal should proceed on original terms.”
Twitter did not respond.
