Thursday November 11, 2021
After voting on Twitter
Musk sells Tesla shares worth billions
For the first time since 2016, Elon Musk is parting with Tesla papers. The entrepreneur wants to pay taxes with the money from the proceeds. If he sticks to a previously held vote on Twitter, further share sales are likely to follow.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has sold shares valued at around $ 5 billion after a vote on Twitter about the sale of company shares. On his first share sale since 2016, Musk’s trust company redeemed nearly 3.6 million shares valued at approximately $ 4 billion and sold an additional 934,000 shares for $ 1.1 billion after having an option to purchase nearly 2.2 million shares had exercised, as emerged from a mandatory disclosure to the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday. The 4.5 million shares correspond to about three percent of his shares in the electric vehicle manufacturer.
Musk sells to pay taxes on the proceeds. Since he is rewarded in stock options at Tesla, he can – at least if he draws them – use cash to pay income taxes due. Tesla has seen a massive stock market rally in recent years that, according to billionaire charts such as the “Forbes” list or “Bloomberg Billionaires” – at least on paper – made Musk the richest person in the world with an estimated fortune of almost $ 300 billion Has.
Musk had users vote on Twitter over the weekend whether he should sell ten percent of his Tesla shares. 58 percent of the 3.5 million votes were in favor. If Musk sticks to the result of the Twitter vote as promised, his current sale should only have been the beginning. In the vote, the Tesla boss alluded to a debate about tax avoidance by the super-rich and plans for taxes on unrealized price gains.
What Musk ultimately wanted to achieve with the vote and the extent to which he planned to sell shares can only be speculated about so far. The SEC announcement shows that at least the current sale was planned over two months before the vote.