After a weeklong lull, Elon Musk has sold another $1 billion worth of Tesla Inc. stock, continuing a nearly monthlong selloff that is expected to continue.
According to filings with the Securities and Exchanges Commission on Thursday, Musk exercised options to buy 2.1 million shares at $6.24 each and immediately sold more than 934,000 of them at prices ranging from $1,058 to $1,112, making about $1.01 billion.
The sale was the first for the Tesla chief executive since Nov. 23, following a flurry of sales in the previous weeks.
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Musk has sold about 10.1 million shares worth about $10.86 billion since Nov. 8, a day after Musk’s Twitter poll decided he should sell 10% of his Tesla stake. Some of the stock sales had been put into motion well before the poll was posted.
Assuming Musk intends to sell 10% of his shares, he’s more than halfway there. Before the sales began, his 10% stake amounted to about 17 million shares — so after Thursday’s sales, he has about 6.9 million shares to go.
Musk, the world’s wealthiest man, has millions of stock options that he needs to exercise by August 2022, and Musk said in September that he intended on selling a large chunk of stock in the fourth quarter. CNBC reported last month that Musk faces about a $15 billion tax bill on those options.
Tesla shares
TSLA,
are down more than 10% over the past 30 days, but are still up 48% year to date, and up 54% over the past 12 months.
This post was originally published on Market Watch
