Tesla-Boss Elon Musk continues after the forced and costly takeover of Twitter continued its sales of Tesla stock to fund part of the $44 billion purchase price. After Musk sold Tesla shares worth around $7 billion in August, he sold another 20 million Tesla shares between November 4th and 8th, raising around $4 billion. This is shown by data from the US supervisory authority SEC. Musk has sold nearly $20 billion in Tesla shares since April.
Tesla investors reacted with uncertainty. They did the same as the Tesla boss and also sold the shares, which was down about 7 percent in late U.S. trade on Wednesday. Since the beginning of the year, Tesla has lost almost half of its market value.
Musk did not take over the short message service Twitter entirely voluntarily. At times he tried to get out of the deal, but under legal pressure he agreed to the takeover. Musk fired management and about half of Twitter’s workforce, but Twitter continues to suffer from a sharp drop in advertising revenue. Some larger advertisers like General Motors, VW, Audi, United Airlines or General Mills temporarily suspended their line items on Twitter.
“Musk is losing credibility even with his fans”
The strategy of selling Tesla shares to partially finance the acquisition of Twitter has met with harsh criticism from the Tesla community. “We had always feared that Musk would have to sell more Tesla shares to finance the Twitter disaster. These fears were confirmed immediately after the closing of the acquisition,” wrote analyst Daniel Ives of Wedbush Securities. “Elon Musk loses credibility even with his fans. He has said several times that the Tesla stock sales are closed. But apparently they are not.”
Musk is the richest man in the world
, but his wealth is directly tied to the value of Tesla stock. Musk has lost billions of dollars this week alone, with his fortune slipping back below the $200 billion mark. Tesla’s market valuation – and thus also Musk’s assets – has almost halved since a year ago.