Musk sells $3.95 billion Tesla stocks after buying Twitter

CEO of Tesla Inc. Elon Musk sold about $3.95 billion worth of shares in the electric car maker days after the Twitter Inc. buyout closed.

According to regulatory filings, Musk sold 19.5 million shares, his first sale since August. The documents do not show that the deals were pre-planned.

Elon Musk recently completed his takeover of the Twitter platform after spending months trying to get out of it. Musk said in August that he had ended the sale of Tesla shares and that it was important to avoid an emergency sale of shares in case he was forced to close the acquisition of Twitter and seek to attract additional capital partners.

It is still not clear how the $44 billion deal was financed, on top of some $13 billion in debt from Wall Street banks. According to some reports, several dignitaries have promised to invest about $7 billion, although it is not known if they all kept their promises. And Musk has never publicly said how he plans to raise his cut of the money needed to close the deal.

Although it is clear to everyone that Twitter is losing money, and now it is necessary to pay almost $ 1.2 billion in interest annually. Since Musk took over Twitter, several large companies have suspended their advertising on the platform as they watch to see how it develops.

Learn how to trade stocks and bonds with Top Forex and CFD brokers

Musk and his financial right-hand man Jared Birchall have yet to comment.

Harsh cost-cutting measures, including laying off half of the staff and overhauling the platform’s operations, led to two turbulent weeks on Twitter, with some employees not quite sure if they were still working there or not.

At the same time, the purchase of Twitter raised concerns among some Tesla shareholders that the CEO was spending too much and would have to get rid of even more of his shares.

Musk sold about $36 billion worth of Tesla shares last year, half of which came when he unveiled the Twitter buyout plan. The stock is now down 53% from last year’s high, bringing Musk’s net worth down to $179.5 billion from $340 billion at its peak.