8:57 am, November 11, 2021
Tesla boss Elon Musk has raised more than $5bn after selling some 4.5m shares of the electric car maker’s stock following a vow he made on Twitter.
The sales – revealed in 10 regulatory filings late yesterday (Nov 10) and equating to some £3.7bn – amount to about three per cent of his stake in the company and fall far short of what he’d promised to do.
The CEO said on Saturday (Nov 6) that he’d sell 10 per cent of his holdings in the company – worth more than $20bn (circa £14.9bn) – if voted for via a Twitter poll.
Musk had, in fact, already said at a conference in September that he’d be likely to sell shares during the fourth quarter because of options that were due to expire early in 2022.
That was nearly two months before he floated the idea of the sale on Twitter.
After the transactions, he still owns about 167m Tesla shares – with the filings also disclosing that he exercised options to buy just over 2.1m shares for $6.24 each.
About $1.1bn (£820m) from the sale will go towards tax obligations for stock options he was granted in September.
Musk – who was Tesla’s largest shareholder as of June, owning about 17 per cent of the company, according to data provider FactSet – is the wealthiest person in the world says Forbes, with a net worth of around $282bn dollars (£210bn), most of it in Tesla stock.
Tesla doesn’t pay Musk a cash salary but he has received huge stock options.
Tesla’s shares have risen by more than 50 per cent this year, and the company’s stock closed yesterday at $1,067.95 per share.
