The American billionaire revealed that the sale of the shares was required to prevent an emergency sale of Tesla stock in the case of being forced to close the $44bn deal with the microblogging site
Elon Musk is the founder of Tesla and SpaceX. (Credit: The Royal Society/Wikipedia.org)
Tesla CEO Elon Musk sold shares worth $6.9bn in the electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer in the last few days just ahead of a legal battle with Twitter over a failed acquisition bid.
On the Twitter platform, Musk revealed that the sale of the shares was necessary to prevent an emergency sale of Tesla stock (TSLA) in the case of being forced to close the $44bn deal with the microblogging site.
Replying to a question from Tesla investor Sawyer Merritt on Twitter on whether he was done with the selling of shares of the EV firm, Musk said: “Yes. In the (hopefully unlikely) event that Twitter forces this deal to close *and* some equity partners don’t come through, it is important to avoid an emergency sale of Tesla stock.”
Furthermore, Musk told Merritt that he will purchase the Tesla stock again if the deal with Twitter doesn’t close.
Merritt revealed that the Tesla CEO filed six Form 4s with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) which showed that he sold 7.92 million shares of the EV company at a weighted average price of $869.09 per share.
In April this year, Musk stated that he has no plans for further TSLA sales after he sold shares worth $8.5bn in the company at that time. Currently, the American billionaire, who is also the founder of SpaceX, owns 155.04 million shares in Tesla.
Musk signed the all-cash deal to acquire the publicly-listed Twitter in April. However, the deal was scrapped by him last month over fake accounts on the social media platform.
Twitter previously stated in an SEC filing that Musk has to pay it $1bn as a termination fee. Subsequently, in July, the company and Musk filed lawsuits against each other which are set to be heard in the latter half of October 2022.