Elon Musk is now halfway to his Twitter target of selling 10% of his Tesla stock – after dumping another $1.05 billion
- Elon Musk has now sold roughly 9.2 million shares in Tesla, netting him just under $10 billion.
- The sales mean he's over halfway towards his Twitter commitment to sell 10% of his holding.
Elon Musk has now sold around 9.2 million shares in Tesla since asking his Twitter followers whether he should offload 10% of his holding in the EV company.
That means the Tesla chief executive is now more than halfway towards the target, which he vowed to honor.
Musk owned over 170 million shares in Tesla in September, according to Bloomberg data, so to get rid of 10% of his stake he'd need to sell around 17 million shares. However, he'd need to sell more if he continues to exercise stock options.
Musk's selling resumed on Tuesday, according to SEC filings from Tuesday that showed he sold another 934,000 shares for $1.05 billion. The sales were earmarked to pay taxes on 2.15 million stock options that he also exercised.
The sales took Musk's total disposals since the Twitter poll on November 6 to around 9.2 million shares, which have netted the Tesla boss a cool $9.9 billion.
Musk asked his followers earlier this month: "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?"
He added that he would "abide by the results of the poll" – and so far it appears he is following through on the promise.
Musk had previously raised the prospect of selling stock to cover taxes that he would have to pay if he exercised stock options that are expiring soon.
The Tesla stock price has been on a rocky ride since Musk started offloading his shares. From a record high of above $1,240 on November 4, the stock fell to an intraday low of $979 on November 15. It has since rebounded to $1,109.03 as of Tuesday's close.
The huge rise in Tesla's share price from around $140 before the start of the pandemic has catapulted Musk to the top of the global rich list. He is now worth more than $300 billion, according to the Bloomberg billionaires index, with the rise in Tesla stock helping him add $134 billion of wealth in the last year.