Elon Musk Offloads Incremental Tesla Shares, Taking The Tally For The Week To $5.7B - Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA)

Tesla Inc. TSLA CEO Elon Musk has sold more shares in the EV maker, new filings revealed Friday.

What Happened: Musk sold 639,737 shares in aggregate on Thursday and the transaction netted him about $687.30 million, a Form 4 filed with the SEC on Friday showed.

With the latest transactions, Musk's cumulative sales of Tesla shares for the week are valued at about $5.7 billion. Musk now holds about 167.49 million shares.

Some of the sales were based on the prearranged trading plan formulated in September.

Musk surprised everyone last weekend when he asked his Twitter Inc TWTR followers whether they support his proposal to sell 10% of his Tesla stake.

The final tally of votes polled in response showed a majority supporting his decision. Keeping his word, Musk began selling shares this past Monday. The sale continued through the week.

Musk hinted in the tweet the move he was contemplating was due to the billionaire tax being contemplated by lawmakers to tax the unrealized gains of wealthy individuals. Meanwhile, Musk has a commitment of more than $10 billion in a tax bill from the exercising of stock options next year, and the proceeds from the sale will likely go toward footing the bill.

Why It's Important: Musk's retained stake of 167.49 million still leaves him with a 16.8% stake in the company.

As of Dec. 31, 2020, the Tesla CEO beneficially owned about 22.4% or 227.13 million shares in the company, according to a 13G/A filing done with the SEC in early February.

Essentially, Musk has liquidated about 5.6% of his stake, which suggests for Musk to hit the 10% target, he has to liquidate further.

The stock sales remove an overhang as the stock," Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives said in a recent note.

"In a nutshell, we would rather Musk rip the band-aid off now and sell this portion of stock quickly rather than it lingering over the next year and feeding into any non-fundamental bear thesis on the story," Ives said.

At last check Friday morning, Tesla shares were slipping 2.01% to $1.041.39.

Image: Courtesy of Tesla Inc.

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