Because of the Twitter dispute: Elon Musk is selling more Tesla shares than ever before

Created: 08/10/2022, 12:01 p.m

Elon Musk is again selling Tesla shares for several billion dollars.

The money should serve as a nest egg in case he still has to buy Twitter.

Austin – Tesla boss Elon Musk, contrary to previous promises, has again sold shares in the US electric car manufacturer on a large scale – and refers to the dispute over the Twitter takeover.

Musk sold $6.9 billion worth of securities, according to reports to the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday.

Elon Musk wants to avoid 'fire sale of Tesla shares'

"In the (hopefully unlikely) event that Twitter forces the deal to close and some equity partners exit, it's important to avoid a fire sale of Tesla shares," Musk said in a tweet.

At the end of April he had written that no further share sales were planned.

Musk is in a legal battle with Twitter because he wants to call off the roughly $44 billion takeover of the short message service.

Musk justified his withdrawal by saying that Twitter had given false information about the number of fake accounts on the platform.

The service also breached its contract by not providing sufficient access to check the numbers, its lawyers argue.

Twitter rejects the allegations and wants to reach a court in Delaware that Musk is obliged to close the deal on the original terms.

The five-day hearing is scheduled to begin on October 17.

Elon Musk sold Tesla shares back in April

In April, Elon Musk sold Tesla shares in several steps for around $8.5 billion to finance the Twitter deal.

He had originally planned to finance part of the purchase price with a loan secured with Tesla shares.

But the slide in the share price of the electric car manufacturer thwarted his plans.

Instead, he announced that he would contribute a higher proportion of the purchase price as equity and brought partners such as software entrepreneur Larry Ellison on board.

This week's sale was the largest single move he's sold Tesla shares to date.

Last year he had already raised more than $ 16 billion from the sale of shares in the electric car manufacturer.

First, he had to do this to pay taxes on redeemed stock options.

At the same time, in a Twitter survey of users of the service, he had committed himself to selling off a tenth of his holding.

If Twitter deal bursts: Musk would buy back Tesla shares

Musk has also now signaled that he could buy back Tesla stock if the Twitter acquisition doesn't go through.

When asked by followers on Twitter if he would stop selling and buying Tesla stock in that case, he succinctly replied, "Yes."

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When Musk started his big stock sales last year, some Tesla shares were worth more than $1,100.

They closed at $850 on Tuesday – after the price fell just below $630 in May.