Tesla CEO Elon Musk has sold off almost $6.9 billion worth of Tesla shares since Friday, per regulatory filings. Musk also sold 8.5 billion back in April, and it seems that Musk may potentially be doing so to bulk up on cash in case he’s forced to go through on his $44 billion Twitter acquisition.
Elon Musk told Twitter last month that he would be terminating the deal because he believed that Twitter might be misleading in its bot calculations. Elon then stated that “If Twitter simply provides their method of sampling 100 accounts and how they’re confirmed to be real, the deal should proceed on original terms. However, if it turns out that their SEC filings are materially false, then it should not proceed.”
Over the last ten months, Musk has sold around $32 billion worth of stock in Tesla and has stated that if the Twitter deal doesn’t close, he’ll buy back his shares, and might even wait until Tesla issues its three-to-one stock split so that he can buy them back on the cheap.