{"id":38313,"date":"2022-12-14T22:07:03","date_gmt":"2022-12-15T03:07:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/?p=38313"},"modified":"2022-12-14T22:07:03","modified_gmt":"2022-12-15T03:07:03","slug":"elon-musk-sells-yet-another-3-6-billion-in-tsla-stock-to-fund-twitter-disaster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/?p=38313","title":{"rendered":"Elon Musk sells yet another $3.6 billion in TSLA stock to fund twitter disaster"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\t\"Tesla
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Elon Musk has sold another tranche of Tesla shares, this time worth $3.6 billion, amidst ongoing chaos related to his twitter takeover. The sale was announced in a Form 4 filing with the SEC<\/a> on Wednesday night.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The sale represents almost 22 million shares of TSLA sold over the course of the last three trading days, at share prices between $156-$176. TSLA stock has fallen about 20 points in that time period, losing more than 10% of its value.<\/p>\n

This has resulted in Musk losing his title as world\u2019s richest man<\/a>, a title he had first obtained in early 2021<\/a>. He was supplanted by Bernard Arnault, the CEO of luxury goods conglomerate LVMH.<\/p>\n

Yesterday Musk took to twitter to reassure Tesla shareholders that they would \u201cbenefit long term\u201d from his twitter ownership<\/a>. We now know that, at the time, he was currently in the process of offloading tens of millions of shares.<\/p>\n

This is not the first time Musk has sold TSLA shares since he first announced his bid to take over Twitter. The first was last December<\/a> after running a twitter poll about whether he should purchase the company or not, after which he claimed to have sold roughly enough of his stake in Tesla to fund the purchase.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s not the only time he said he was done selling Tesla stock related to the twitter acquisition. In August, we reported on him selling $6.9 billion in stock<\/a>, after which he explicitly said \u201cYes\u201d when asked if he was \u201cdone selling.\u201d<\/p>\n

Musk then went on to sell another $3.9 billion in stock this November<\/a>, after both of these pronouncements. He told Twitter employees in an all-hands meeting that this was necessary to \u201csave\u201d the site<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s sale is Musk\u2019s fourth major sale of Tesla stock related to the acquisition, now totaling about $16 billion worth. Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion, though he did gain additional funding in the form of loans from outside sources<\/a>. Those loans have a total interest bill of about $1 billion yearly \u2013 a significant cost for a company that had heretofore lost on the order of $200 million per quarter, while it was publicly run.<\/p>\n

While we don\u2019t know about Twitter\u2019s current financial situation as it is now private, available external signs point to trouble. There has been a drastic dropoff in advertising revenue<\/a>, with advertisers pulling ads from the platform, and desktop visits to their ad manager software dropping by up to 85%.<\/p>\n

Between additional costs for twitter and dropping revenue, Musk seems to have seen the necessity of freeing up more funding for his new company. While twitter\u2019s new paid verification option may make up some of that revenue, it is unlikely to make a huge difference compared to the additional debt and loss of revenue that twitter is currently facing.<\/p>\n

In the past, Musk had repeatedly stated that he would be the last person to sell Tesla stock.<\/p>\n

Electrek\u2019s Take<\/h2>\n

Yesterday\u2019s message that Tesla shareholders would \u201cbenefit long term\u201d from Musk\u2019s twitter ownership led us to wonder: \u201cbut how?<\/a>\u201d In hindsight, it perhaps had something to do with preparing shareholders for today\u2019s large stock sale announcement.<\/p>\n

In the Electrek\u2019s Take section for that article (which I encourage you all to read<\/a>), Fred mentioned the echo chamber that Musk has created around himself, and that even the superfans allowed into that echo chamber are currently questioning whether Musk is fit to lead Tesla.<\/p>\n

He certainly seems distracted, spending so much of his time on Twitter issues, and very little on Tesla issues. And now, more Tesla stock is being sold to \u201cthrow into the twitter dumpster fire<\/a>,\u201d as Fred so succinctly wrote. This puts downward pressure on Tesla stock, which makes it difficult to believe that the twitter takeover is helping TSLA shareholders or Tesla\u2019s mission as a whole.<\/p>\n

We here at Electrek are obviously interested in the electric vehicle revolution, as it is the one of the most significant ways that we can decarbonize society. As such, we support Tesla\u2019s mission and think that the leading company in automotive electrification should have competent leadership paying attention to the needs of the company.<\/p>\n

It is clear that this distraction is harming the company\u2019s perception<\/a> in the public eye, and we would like to see less distraction from Tesla leadership.<\/p>\n

\n

FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links.<\/em> More.<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Elon Musk has sold another tranche of Tesla shares, this time worth $3.6 billion, amidst ongoing chaos related to his twitter takeover. The sale was announced in a Form 4 filing with the SEC on Wednesday night. The sale represents almost 22 million shares of TSLA sold over the course of the last three trading […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8313,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-e-cars"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38313\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}