Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s Twitter acquisition made headlines for the last two weeks and continues to make more in the context of the US midterm elections, as per InsideEVs.
However, an interesting development went almost unseen: Elon Musk sold $3.95 billion worth of Tesla shares days after completing his social media platform purchase for $44 billion.
According to regulatory filings published by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and noted by Reuters, Musk unloaded 19.5 million shares between October 4–October 8. Still, the sale’s purpose was not disclosed.
$8.5 billion of Tesla shares sold in April
The latest stock sale confirmed analysts’ expectations that Musk would sell additional Tesla shares to back the Twitter deal. Back in April, after Musk sold $8.5 billion of Tesla shares, he said on Twitter that no further sales were planned.
$6.9 billion Tesla shares sold in August
However, he went on to sell another $6.9 billion worth of Tesla shares in August, motivating that he needed the money to pay for the Twitter acquisition. At the time, he stated that he was done selling Tesla stock.
According to a Reuters calculation, Musk had about $20 billion in cash after selling a part of his stake in Tesla, which includes the sales made in 2021. Despite that, he would still have raised an extra $2 billion to $3 billion to support the takeover.
That is why he probably sold shares worth $3.95 billion earlier this month, although that remains unconfirmed.
Debt financing
The billionaire vowed to provide $46.5 billion in equity and debt financing for the Twitter purchase to cover the $44 billion price tag and the closing costs.
Banks, including Morgan Stanley and Bank of America Corp, committed to providing $13 billion in debt financing.
Musk’s $33.5 billion equity commitment included his 9.6% Twitter stake, worth $4 billion, and the $7.1 billion he secured from equity investors, including Oracle Corp co-founder Larry Ellison and Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal.
Changes in Twitter after Musk’s takeover
After obtaining Twitter last month, Musk adopted drastic measures, which included laying off half the staff and rolling out a plan to charge users $8 per month for blue check verification marks.
The billionaire said, “no choice” but to cut Twitter’s workforce as the social media platform loses more than $4 million daily.
