Elon Musk, the richest man on Earth, is on a share-selling spree, as the chief executive of Tesla Inc reportedly sold another 1.05 billion dollars in Tesla shares, according to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
The shares were scheduled to exercise options in September which would have expired in 2022. This makes the total amount of Tesla shares sold by Musk in November worth close to 10 billion dollars.
According to the filing, Musk sold 934,091 shares of the luxury electric car maker at an average price of 1,166 dollars per share. He also bought 2.15 million shares of the company.
Earlier, in the second week of this month, Musk had sold shares worth 6.9 billion dollars, which was followed by another such exercise to sell another 1.9 billion dollars worth of shares.
These were sold after Musk asked his Twitter followers to vote whether he should sell 10 per cent of his Tesla stock.
After the entire series of transactions, Musk, along with his trust, holds 169 million shares in Tesla.
While the entire selling spree might come across as random and under the influence of the Twitter poll, it was planned from the very beginning as Musk had hinted multiple times that he would have to pay 50 per cent in taxes if his stock options expire at Tesla.
Talking about his selling of stock, Morningstar analyst Seth Goldstein wrote in a statement last week, "We do not view management's potential decision to sell stock as a reason to change our forecast for Tesla."
Tesla stock reached an all-time high in early November, when the stock was valued at 1,243 dollars. But, since then, the shares lost ground and dropped to 979 dollars on November 15.
The stock has recovered slightly and is currently trading at 1,243 dollars, up 18.40 dollars, or 1.66 per cent higher than the previous close, at 1,109.03 dollars.
