- Elon Musk could be forced to sell Tesla stock as losses at Twitter pile up, according to Gene Munster.
- The Loup Funds managing partner told CNBC that unless the advertiser exodus improves, Musk may have to sell shares in April.
Elon Musk could be forced to sell Tesla stock if advertisers continue to leave Twitter in large droves, according to Loup managing partner Gene Munster.
In an interview with CNBC on Monday, Munster said that while Musk can still reverse course and stop the bleeding at Twitter, time is running short.
Musk, who took over Twitter last month, has said the social media platform is losing $4 million a day, and analysts have pointed out that a key debt payment is due in April. Meanwhile, the likes of Volkswagen, Pfizer and General Motors have said they will pause advertising on Twitter.
"They have a month here to kind of kitchen sink things and get people to reset with what their products are and get advertisers to understand what their content moderation is," Munster said. "If that yields the current environment, he's gonna have to sell Tesla shares in April."
Tesla stock was down 4.5% at $198.15 on Monday afternoon.
Musk's drawn-out takeover of Twitter finally came to fruition on October 27 at a price tag of $54.20 per share. He long maintained that cost cutting measures at Twitter would imminently be necessary, and wasted no time in firing several top executives as well as laying off half of the staff.
Meanwhile, Musk said last month on Tesla's third-quarter earnings call that the company was working on a potential share buyback.
He told analysts that "we'll do some meaningful buyback. Even if next year is a very difficult year, we still have the ability to do a $5 billion to $10 billion buyback."
If Tesla chooses to purchase stock on the higher end of Musk's estimate, that would equate to over 46 million shares of stock.