Elon Musk Is Selling Tesla?
Elon Musk has offloaded an immense portion of his Tesla shares, potentially signaling the mogul may have less control over the car company.
This article is more than 2 years old
Elon Musk isn’t selling Tesla per se. However, he did offload a huge chunk of his Tesla shares. The expeditious move was likely related to Musk’s ongoing saga with Twitter.
This past week Elon Musk sold 7.9 million of his Tesla shares. This left the Tesla CEO with a mere 15% stake in the company, according to the Wall Street Journal. Speculatively, Musk did this as a precautionary measure in case he is forced to buy Twitter.
If you haven’t been following the whole Elon Musk versus Twitter debacle, here’s the short version. Back in April, Elon Musk purchased a 9% stake in the social media company. This made him the largest shareholder. Shortly after, he moved to purchase the company for $54.20 per share, or around $44 billion.
The deal, however, was never finalized. This is because Musk claimed Twitter repeatedly failed to produce specific metrics related to how many bots were on the platform at any given time. It’s worth noting that Twitter gave Musk access to their entire wealth of user data after he expressed continuous dissatisfaction about what the company had provided him up until that point.
After that, Elon Musk still said he was unable to find what he was looking for and moved to back out of the deal. Twitter wasn’t having it and swiftly moved to take the mogul to court. The trial is set to begin in October, at which time Musk will find out whether or not he will be legally forced to go through with the purchase. Thus, logically, Musk likely sold off a huge portion of his Tesla stock in preparation for having to buy the social media giant. All that said, Musk is the one who brought this on himself. Subjectively, it looks like the billionaire’s power trip just might get the better of him.
Elon Musk’s recent Tesla share sell-off comes following $8.5 billion worth of stock that he offloaded in April. To date, Musk has let go of $32 billion worth of his stake in Tesla. This may be leaving the billionaire feeling a bit uneasy, considering that in the past he has been exceedingly protective of his stake in the company. Decision-making authority at Tesla is something that is paramount for Musk, less of a stake could mean that he would have less control over Tesla as a whole.
Although, Musk did say that should he be allowed to walk away from purchasing Twitter that he would re-purchase the Tesla shares that he let go of. The mogul also said he is toying with the idea of creating his own social media platform should the Twitter deal become null and void.
Ultimately, the trial in October will serve to determine the conclusion of this entire debacle. All of that said, regardless of the outcome, Elon Musk will absolutely land on his feet. He is the world’s richest man and with a net worth of $250 billion he’s not exactly hurting for money.
