Tesla chief executive Elon Musk has sold an additional $973 million worth of his shares in the company to pay his taxes, according to documents filed after the electric vehicle maker’s shares rebounded.
Elon Musk is one of the majority shareholders in his Tesla company, famous for its high-end electric vehicles. In the past week alone, the US billionaire has acquired an additional 2.1 million shares in the company, worth around $2.2 billion, according to Tuesday’s closing data. However, he decided to sell some of them, 943,091 shares for a total of $973 million. The reason? To pay his taxes, and to keep the commitments he made to his community on Twitter.
On Saturday 6 November, the billionaire published a poll on the social network, asking his community whether he should sell part of his stake in Tesla. Faced with the wave of “yes” votes, Elon Musk has sold last week 8.2 million shares he held in the electric car manufacturer, for a sum approaching 8.8 billion dollars. Although these figures seem and are indeed pharaonic, they represent only half of Musk’s objective, namely to sell 10% of his stake in Tesla.
After several difficult days following the billionaire’s declarations, Tesla has recovered, and at the close of trading on Tuesday, the stock was up 4.1%. However, its market capitalisation has been on a downward trend since Elon Musk started selling shares.
With electric carmakers increasingly in demand on Wall Street, Tesla’s stock has jumped more than 150% in the past 12 months.
“There’s still a lot of buying interest because I still think at the end of the day, investors see this as a phase, and see the pullbacks as an opportunity,” said Craig Erlam, an economist at OANDA. “If you ask me where the share price is going to be in six, 12 months, I would say it’s more likely to be 20% higher than 20% lower.”
Read also > STOCK MARKET : TESLA FALLS AFTER ELON MUSK’S TWEET
Featured photo : © Flickr
