Elon Musk has now backpedaled on comments he made back in April, selling more Tesla shares in anticipation of his upcoming trial against Twitter. Four months ago, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO sold off $8.4 billion USD’s worth of shares he had in the former company before confirming with a tweet that he had no further plans to sell any more TSLA shares. Between August 5 and August 9, however, the tech mogul sold another 7,924,107 shares worth roughly $6.9 billion USD.
Explaining why he sold the shares, Musk posted on Twitter that he needed cash in case some equity partners “don’t come through” if the social media platform really manages to push through with the deal with a victory in court, adding that he wants to avoid any emergency selling. Wall Street analyst Dan Ives subsequently commented that “Musk selling TSLA stock after he said no more sales will lead the Street to focus on chances of Twitter deal happening and Musk preparing cash portion … This stock sale will raise a lot of conversation on Street for bulls/bears in the morning.”
No further TSLA sales planned after today
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 29, 2022
Yes.
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.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 10, 2022
In other related news, Musk claims that the Tesla Model Y will soon become the best-selling car in the world by both revenue and volume.