Elon Musk, the founder and CEO of Tesla Inc., has sold another $3.6 billion worth stock in the luxury electric car maker, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Over a period of three days ended December 14, Musk sold 22 million shares in Tesla.
Following the news, Tesla stock declined around 3 percent on Wednesday’s regular trading, and is down a further 3.2 percent in pre-market trading on Nasdaq on Thursday.
In the middle of the stake sale, Musk on Tuesday tweeted, “At risk of stating obvious, beware of debt in turbulent macroeconomic conditions, especially when Fed keeps raising rates.”
This is the second time that Musk sells his Tesla shares after the $44 billion Twitter purchase in October. In November also, Musk sold 19.5 million shares worth $3.95 billion partly to fund his Twitter deal.
Musk, who remains the largest shareholder in Tesla with 13.4 percent stake, in April this year had sold billions worth of Tesla shares, but said then in a tweet that, “No further TSLA sales planned after today.”
However, in August, Musk sold around 7.9 million shares in Tesla reportedly worth around $6.88 billion. He was then facing a legal battle for his intended withdrawal from the planned Twitter acquisition, and stated that the sale was to avoid an emergency sale of its stock in the event of a forceful Twitter deal.
The news of share disposal comes at a time when Tesla’s share price more than halved in 2022, and Musk is facing criticism from Tesla investors over his much concentration on Twitter than on Tesla.
In November last year, Musk had sold some of his Tesla shares to pay taxes after asking his Twitter followers their opinion about the proposed sale in a poll.
Musk, whose wealth is mostly tied up in Tesla shares, recently lost his title as the world’s richest person to Louis Vuitton head Bernard Arnault.
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