Tesla chief Elon Musk has sold around 7.92 million shares of the electric car manufacturer’s stock in an attempt to shore up his personal finances in light of his court case against social media platform Twitter. The shares were cumulatively worth around $6.9 billion.
The stock sales happened over the days of August 5, 8, and 9, with a weighted average share price of $869.09. This is the first time Musk has sold Tesla shares since late April when he sold 4.4 million shares worth $4 billion to finance his proposed $44 billion acquisition of Twitter. At the time, he had said that there were “no further TSLA sales planned after today.”
However, the billionaire’s acquisition plans for Twitter have gone sour in the past few months.
After Musk questioned a Twitter report that found only 5 percent of daily monetisable users to be spam bots, he pulled out of the acquisition when the social media platform refused to provide full access to their user data to verify the report.
In response, Twitter has asked for a court date with Musk to force him into at least paying the $1 billion fee for withdrawing his acquisition proposal, while Musk claims that he should not have to pay the fee due to lack of disclosure around the spam bot report. The two sides head to trial on October 17.
Tesla’s stock price had rebounded nearly 15 percent since its better-than-expected quarterly results report on July 20 but is still down over 30 percent from its April high of $1,145.45 per share. As of close yesterday, the stock is priced at $850 per share.
