Elon Musk Is Dumping Billions in Tesla Stock
Elon Musk sold around $3.6 billion worth of shares of his flagship company Tesla this week, despite reassuring investors in April that he had “no further TSLA sales planned” after he secured the funds to acquire Twitter in a $44 billion deal.
The sale was revealed in an SEC filing submitted by Musk showing that between Monday and Wednesday he offloaded around 22 million shares of the electric vehicle company. The total value of Musk’s Tesla stock sales this year is estimated to amount to around $40 billion.
Tesla’s stock has underperformed an already struggling tech market in 2022, in part due to investors balking at Musk’s sloppy takeover of Twitter. $TSLA is down more than 50 percent year to date, compared to a general 16 percent decline across the S&P 500. The financial struggles have cost Musk his title of “Richest Man In The World,” with Bernard Arnault, founder and CEO of LVMH, taking over the top spot on the Forbes list earlier this week.
Despite the stock dump, Musk has tweeted several times this week that investors should remain confident, writing that he would “make sure Tesla shareholders benefit from Twitter long-term.”
Investors and executives at Tesla have raised concerns regarding Musk’s shifted focus to Twitter. On Wednesday, Tesla’s third-largest shareholder, investor Leo KoGuan, tweeted that Musk had “abandoned Tesla” and that the company “has no working CEO.” Other prominent investors have echoed the concerns. Future Fund Managing Partner Gary Black tweeted that the market was indicating that “the $TSLA brand has been negatively impacted by the Twitter drama. Where before EV buyers were proud to drive their Teslas to their friends or show off Teslas in their driveways, now the Twitter controversy is hurting Tesla’s brand equity.”