He sold about 4.4 million Tesla shares, taking about $4 billion, according to SEC filings. After that, no further sales are planned, he tweeted on Friday night. Musk gave no reason for the stock sale in the filing.
Last fall, he sold more than $16 billion worth of Tesla stock, largely to pay taxes due on redeemed stock options. However, he has now committed to bringing in his own funds of up to $21 billion for the Twitter purchase. How exactly he wants to raise them is still unclear. Musk still holds a good 168 million Tesla shares after the recent sale. He wants to use part of it to secure a loan of 12.5 billion dollars, which is also intended to finance the Twitter deal.
Musk made a total of $46.5 billion in financing commitments for the Twitter purchase. He agreed to the takeover with the online service, but is still dependent on enough shareholders giving him his shares at a price of $54.20.
The tech billionaire explains his interest in Twitter by saying that freedom of speech is restricted on the platform. He wants to change that. This brings him in line with conservatives, corona skeptics and supporters of ex-President Donald Trump in the USA, all of whom complain about “censorship” on Twitter.
On the night of Friday, Musk also tweeted a bit more about his political views: He supported President Barack Obama at the time, “but today’s Democratic Party was hijacked by extremists.”
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Source: Nachrichten
