Elon Musk disclosed he had dumped another $3.95bn worth of his Tesla shares on Tuesday, taking his total sales to nearly $20bn since he launched his $44bn takeover bid for Twitter this year.
The purpose of the latest sales, which took place between Friday and Tuesday, according to a regulatory filing, was not disclosed. But concerns Musk would need to sell a large block of Tesla stock to finance his Twitter purchase have hung over the electric carmaker’s share price for much of this year.
Tesla shares have fallen 52 per cent this year, and are down 42 per cent since the billionaire announced his offer for the social media site in April.
The Tesla chief executive appeared to claim he had sufficient funds to complete the Twitter deal after an initial sale of $8.5bn worth of the carmaker’s stock in April. At the time, he wrote on Twitter: “No further TSLA sales planned after today.”
However, he went on to sell another $6.9bn of Tesla shares in August and linked the second sale directly to the need to pay for the platform.
The August transactions came at a time when Musk was trying to back out of the deal. Asked on Twitter whether the sales were the last he was planning, he responded: “Yes. 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.”
Musk’s latest sales began a week after the Twitter deal closed. The disposal of 19.5mn shares took place at an average price of about $202 a share. That compared with a split-adjusted average share price of $290 at the time of his previous share sales, in August.
Musk arranged to finance the Twitter purchase with $12.7bn of bank debt and also announced $7bn of equity commitments from other investors this year, implying he would be on the hook for more than $24bn of the purchase price.
His advisers continued to seek other investors, though it is unclear how much additional equity he was able to attract. Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey also agreed to commit his own stake, worth roughly $1bn, to back Musk’s purchase, further reducing the financing pressure.