Elon Musk unloads another $3.6 billion in Tesla stock

Elon Musk has sold another tranche of Tesla stock, worth nearly $3.6 billion, in a move that may further anger already frustrated shareholders in the electric vehicle group.

The billionaire, who acquired the social media company in October, has sold four tranches of shares totaling nearly $23 billion since announcing his acquisition of Twitter.

It is the third sale since it was declared in April that there would be “no further TSLA sales” to support the deal.

This latest sell-off, which took place between Monday and Wednesday this week, according to a filing, amounted to 22 million shares in the electric vehicle group.

A reason for the sale was not given. Musk could not be reached for comment Wednesday night.

Musk arranged to finance the Twitter purchase with $12.7 billion in bank debt and also announced $7 billion in equity commitments from other investors this year, implying he would pay more than $24 billion of the purchase price.

On Tuesday, Musk tweeted, “At the risk of being obvious, watch out for debt in turbulent macroeconomic conditions, especially as the Fed continues to raise rates.”

The sale comes after investors expressed frustration over Tesla’s future led by what some consider a highly distracted CEO.

Tesla’s share price is down 61 percent since the start of the year, leaving it behind rival auto groups like Ford or General Motors.

“Elon has let Tesla down and Tesla has no working CEO,” Leo KoGuan, a major Tesla shareholder, wrote on Twitter.

“Are we just Elon’s silly bag holders?” he added in another post. “A hangman, Tim Cook-esque, is needed, not Elon.”

Musk appeared to try to ease the concerns on Twitter, writing Tuesday, “I will make sure Tesla shareholders benefit from Twitter in the long run.”

But such proclamations are overshadowed by the controversy surrounding the management of the volatile social network.

Twitter on Wednesday suspended an account that had been sharing publicly available data about the movements of Musk’s private jet. The account’s existence had previously been cited by Musk as proof that he would not put his own interests above his supposed “free speech” principles when running Twitter.

Musk said on Wednesday that the account put his family at risk and announced a change to Twitter’s location disclosure policy.

“Any account that doxxs someone’s real-time location information will be suspended, as it is a physical security violation,” Musk wrote on Twitter, referring to the phrase typically used to describe the malicious publication of someone’s private information, such as a home address, to describe. .

The falling share price of Tesla stock was severe enough to see Musk lose his coveted position as the world’s richest man and fall to second place behind luxury mogul Bernard Arnault, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index ranking.

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