Elon Musk sells Tesla shares worth $4 bn after Twitter deal

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has sold at least $3.95 billion worth of shares in the electric car company after he closed the Twitter deal last week, the US SEC data shows. With this, Musk's offloading of Tesla shares this year to date stands at over $19 billion -- $8 billion in April, $7 billion in August and around $4 billion in November. In 2021, when Tesla stock surged around 50%, he sold shares worth $22 billion.

Musk's selling of the stocks led to a 2.93% fall in the EV giant's shares on Tuesday and also wiped out a part of his fortune, which skidded below $200 billion at $194.8 billion, shows Forbes data. Musk still owns around 15% of Tesla, which has an m-cap of $622 billion.

The selloff by Musk comes after he said in August that he won't sell more Tesla shares to fund the Twitter deal. As Twitter moved the court to force him to seal the deal in July, after he backed out after signing it in April, he said on August 9 that in the (hopefully unlikely) event that Twitter forces this deal to close and some equity partners don’t come through, it was important to avoid an emergency sale of Tesla stock.

The company's stock has faced huge selling pressure this year amid the global selloff and the stock is down 52.17%. In contrast, the Nasdaq Composite has plunged 32.95% in the year-to-date period.

Investors have also been on a stock dumping spree. In the past week since he acquired Twitter, Tesla shares have fallen 15.37%, on fears that Musk, who is actively engaged in day-to-day workings at Twitter, is more preoccupied with it. The stock has fallen 14.20% in the past month; 27.09% in the past six months; 52.17% in the year-to-date period and 43.93% in the past year.

Since Musk announced his plans to buy Twitter in April, it impacted Tesla shares immensely. His personal net worth has also dropped around $70 billion since then. After a major tussle with Twitter's previous management, Musk bought the company at the previously agreed share price for a $44 billion deal. Of this, $33.5 billion was equity commitment and $13 billion in loans.

The billionaire wants to completely overhaul Twitter, which has faced losses for years. He has already fired top management and about 50% of the company's workforce. In India, the Tesla CEO fired 90% of employees, leaving only a dozen employees.

The company is now in a process of launching several features, including $8 per month Blue Tick service, to make itself less dependent on ads. Musk has claimed since the company was acquired last month, its usage is at an all-time high. "I just hope the servers don't melt!" he tweeted.

Notably, India is one of the biggest markets for global tech giants like Google and Meta. It has around 23.6 million Twitter users, as per the Statista data as of January 2022. The only two countries that have more Twitter users than India are the US and Japan at 76.9 million and 58.95 million, respectively.