Investor's Corner

Elon Musk is about 30% through his Tesla stock sale

[Credit: HBO]

Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) CEO Elon Musk is about 30% through his sale of the automaker’s stock. A new filing with the SEC on Friday morning confirmed Musk sold another $683.7 million of Tesla shares, bringing the grand total thus far to 5.2 million unloaded shares for the Tesla CEO this week.

Musk started selling Tesla shares on Monday, November 8th, according to filings with the SEC that were published on Wednesday. Musk sold 934,091 shares in the documents, but also exercised options on 2,154,572 shares at $6.24.

Musk’s selling spree of Tesla stock continued through the night, with more filings released on Wednesday. Now, new filings released earlier this morning have revealed an additional sale of $687.3 million, bringing the grand total of shares sold to 5.2 million, or $5.8 billion thus far.

Musk stated last weekend that he would be willing to sell 10% of his Tesla shares to cover capital gains taxes pending the results of a 24-hour Twitter poll. The poll resulted in over 3.5 responses, concluding Musk should sell his shares, with 57.9% of respondents indicating “Yes” to Musk’s inquiry.

In total, Musk will offload around 17 million shares of Tesla stock, meaning his 5.2 million already-sold shares accounts for around 30.5% of what will be sold when Musk completes the entire sale.

The two active trading days following Musk’s announcement on Saturday erased 15% of Tesla’s valuation, with massive downswings that were expected due to his sale of the stock. Tesla shares rebounded on Wednesday, closing 4.5% higher than they opened that morning. However, the decrease has continued today, as the release of the new SEC filings could be the reason for another nearly 11% fall this morning.  Tesla shares were trading at $1,022.68 at the time of writing. For the week, Tesla stock is down 10.9%, although the company’s trillion-dollar valuation remains valid as the market cap for the electric automaker remains at $1.01 trillion.

Tesla shares are up over 40.6% for the year, or around $300.

Disclosure: Joey Klender is a TSLA Shareholder.

I’d love to hear from you! If you have any comments, concerns, or questions, please email me at joey@teslarati.com. You can also reach me on Twitter @KlenderJoey, or if you have news tips, you can email us at tips@teslarati.com.

Elon Musk is about 30% through his Tesla stock sale
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