Elon Musk Sells Almost $5 Billion Worth of Tesla Stock

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has reportedly sold nearly $5 billion in Tesla stock, according to recent financial filings.

CNBC reports that Tesla CEO Elon Musk sold millions of shares of Tesla stock valued at almost $5 billion this week; he still owns more than 166 million shares of the electric car maker.

Musk’s trust sold more than 3.5 million shares valued at over $3.88 billion in a number of trades executed on Tuesday and Wednesday. The transactions were not marked as 10b5 which means that they were not pre-scheduled sales.

Musk did, however, schedule the sale of a separate block of Tesla shares in a plan that was set in motion on September 14 this year. The sale of those 930,000 shares is worth over $1.1 billion. These shares were sold partly to satisfy tax obligations related to another exercise of stock options.

Breitbart News reported earlier this week that Tesla shares fell by five percent on Monday morning after Musk asked his followers on Twitter if he should sell 10 percent of his company stock. Share prices fell by 5.3 percent to $1,157.30 at 9:16 a.m. ET, a decrease from $1,222.09 at the market close last Friday. This started a slide over the next few trading sessions.

Shares fell by over seven percent in pre-market trading on Monday. In a Twitter poll posted on Saturday, musk asked: “Much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10% of my Tesla stock. Do you support this?”

Musk’s followers could choose from “Yes,” or “No.” 3,519,252 people responded to the poll and 57.9 percent voted “yes.”

Much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10% of my Tesla stock.

Do you support this?

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 6, 2021

Musk has said in the past that he’d likely sell a “huge block” of options in the fourth quarter. He said at the Code Conference in California in September that his marginal tax rate will be over 50 percent when his stock options expire at Tesla. “I have a bunch of options that are expiring early next year, so … a huge block of options will sell in Q4 — because I have to or they’ll expire,” he said. This likely refers to the block of 930,000 shares he recently sold for $1.1 billion.

Citadel CEO Ken Griffin said while speaking at the DealBook Online Summit on Wednesday that he personally did not want to see Musk sell his shares. stating: “Individuals like Elon Musk, like Jeff Bezos have transformed life, and we want to keep them in control of their companies, as long as they’ve got the energy and the ambition to keep moving the business forward.”

Read more at CNBC here.

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com