Elon Musk has sold billions of dollars in Tesla shares even after promising he wouldn’t offload more, including a whopping $3.6 billion in stock he offloaded earlier this week.
Filings from the Securities and Exchange Commission reveal he made the transaction between Monday to Wednesday. This is likely to spark discontent amongst Tesla shareholders, who have already expressed concern over the previous shares the billionaire sold.
The latest transaction comes only a little over a month after Elon offloaded almost $4 billion in Tesla shares.
He similarly sold a huge amount of shares in August, after swearing in April he wasn’t going to give any more Tesla stocks away.
To date, Elon has sold over $36 billion in Tesla shares, with more than half of the sales happening since his Twitter takeover earlier this year. Elon has faced criticism from shareholders over his moves, with some saying he's invested too much time and energy into the social media platform, at the expense of his other businesses.
Elon is currently the CEO of Twitter and has made a lot of controversial moves to the site since his takeover in the fall. This includes introducing a premium Twitter subscription, which allows users to pay for a blue verification check mark.
He's also sparked controversy for firing half of Twitter’s employees, including top-ranking executives. He’s currently facing multiple lawsuits over the firing.
It’s been reported that various advertisers have dropped Twitter in response to the changes. Additionally, various users (including high-profile people) have closed their accounts, especially since the new verification system makes it easy to impersonate people on Twitter.
The SpaceX founder has admitted Twitter is hemorrhaging millions of dollars a day, which may explain his need to sell Tesla stocks in order to finance the $44 billion takeover.
While Twitter may be one of Elon’s main concerns at the moment, the businessman swears he doesn’t want to be so hands-on forever.
In November, Elon took the stand in an ongoing lawsuit over Tesla’s $56 million pay package. During his testimony, he revealed his plans to reduce his time at Twitter moving forward.
“I frankly don’t want to be the CEO of any company,” he said.
Elon originally announced his plans to buy Twitter in April, before backing out after claiming the site provided him with inaccurate information. However, only months later (and following a lawsuit from Twitter), Elon agreed to buy the platform for the original price.