After promise, Musk sells USD 1.1 billion in Tesla shares to pay taxes

 

 

 

AFTER making a promise on Twitter, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has sold about 900,000 shares of the electric car maker’s stock, netting over USD 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 USD 6.24 each. The company’s stock closed on Wednesday at USD 1,067.95 per share.

 

The transactions were “automatically effected” as part of a trading plan adopted on September 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. After the transactions, Musk still owns about 170 million Tesla shares. Musk was Tesla’s largest shareholder as of June, owning about 17 per cent 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 USD 282 billion, most of it in Tesla stock. Last weekend, Musk said he would sell 10 per cent of his holdings in the company, worth more than USD 20 billion, based on the results of a poll he conducted on Twitter. The sale tweets caused a sell off of the stock on Monday and Tuesday, but it recovered some on Wednesday.