Another day, another billion dollars.
Or in Elon Musk’s case, $1.2 billion. A filing late Friday shows that Musk sold another 1.2 million shares of Tesla stock on Friday, at an average price of $1,030 a share. It brings his sales for the week to a total of 6.4 million shares, for a grand total of $6.9 billion. Still, that only amounts to less than 4% of the shares he holds directly, or less than 3% if you include all the options he owns to buy additional shares. A week ago Musk posted a Twitter poll asking if he should sell 10% of his holdings as a way of increasing his tax liability, and 58% of those who responded said yes. His sales of stock this week have pushed down the value of Tesla shares for shareholders — including himself, since he is by far the largest shareholder. Tesla ( TSLA) shares ended the week down $189 a share, or 15.4%. It’s unlikely that the Twitter poll was the main motivation for the sale. Rather, he faces a looming tax bill that will be triggered by his need to exercise 22.9 million options to purchase shares before next August. That bill would be nearly $10 billion at current market prices. If he doesn’t exercise the options by then, they’ll expire and he’ll lose the right to buy each share for a mere $6.
