Elon Musk sells $6.9 billion worth of Tesla shares, says he'll buy them back
Elon Musk once said his money will be the "last out" of Tesla, but he's selling massive amounts of Tesla stock – again.
Musk unloaded a decent chunk of his Tesla shares in April, ahead of a planned Twitter buyout. And now, according to regulatory filings published on Tuesday, he's sold an additional 7,924,107 Tesla shares, worth roughly $6.9 billion.
According to the documents, the sales took place between August 5 and August 9.
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Musk himself confirmed the news on Twitter, and shared some reasoning behind the sale. "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," he tweeted.
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When asked whether he would buy Tesla stock again in case the Twitter deal doesn't close, Musk answered affirmatively.
Musk's $44 billion Twitter buyout went sideways after Musk started claiming that Twitter's assessment of how many bots there are on the platform was bogus. Now, both sides are suing each other, and there's no telling whether the deal will go through or not.
While Musk's reasons for the sale do make sense, he did say in April that he doesn't plan any further sales of Tesla stock, so this news might not sit too well with investors. The trial between Musk and Twitter is scheduled to begin on October 17 in Delaware, and it might take a while to resolve, so don't count on Musk buying back those shares very soon.
Stan is a Senior Editor at Mashable, where he has worked since 2007. He's got more battery-powered gadgets and band t-shirts than you. He writes about the next groundbreaking thing. Typically, this is a phone, a coin, or a car. His ultimate goal is to know something about everything.
