Tesla CEO Elon Musk lives up to Twitter promise, sells around 900,000 Tesla shares worth $1.1 billion

By Team Newsable | First Published Nov 11, 2021, 10:28 AM IST

Notably, even after selling a block of Tesla shares, Musk still holds more than 170 million shares.

Adhering to his promise on Twitter, Tesla CEO Elon Musk sold around 900,000 shares of his electric car maker Tesla’s stock, worth over $1.1 billion that will go toward paying tax obligations for stock options. The sales, disclosed in two regulatory filings late on Wednesday, will cover tax obligations for stock options granted to Musk in September. He exercised options to buy just over 2.1 million shares for $6.24 each. The company’s stock closed Wednesday at $1,067.95 per share.

Notably, even after selling a block of Tesla shares, Musk still holds more than 170 million shares. Musk was Tesla’s largest shareholder as of June, owning about 17% of the company, according to data provider FactSet. He’s the wealthiest person in the world, according to Forbes, with a net worth of around $282 billion, most of it in Tesla stock.

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Last weekend, based on the results of a poll he conducted on Twitter, Musk said he would sell 10% of his holdings in the company, worth more than $20 billion. The sale tweets caused a sell-off of the stock Monday and Tuesday, but it recovered some on Wednesday. The shares were up 2.6% to $1,096 in extended trading Wednesday, and they have risen more than 50% this year.

The transactions were automatically effected as part of a trading plan adopted on Sept. 14 to sell options that expire next year, according to forms filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. That was nearly two months before he floated the idea of the sale on Twitter, according to The Associated Press.

US President Joe Biden’s recently proposed Democratic plan to levy the taxes on the top billionaires, including Musk, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and 700 others. The latest development comes in response to the proposal which would affect people who either have an income of over $100 million for at least three years in a row or have assets worth over $1 billion.

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