Elon Musk cashed in on his Tesla stock holdings earlier this week, selling 7.9 million shares worth approximately $6.9 billion. This is the second time this year that the CEO of the electric car maker offloaded Tesla stock. He previously sold 9.6 million shares back in April and got $8.5 billion for them.
This latest sale was apparently prompted by an upcoming trial through which social media platform Twitter will try to force Musk to buy the company. The world’s richest man previously agreed to buy Twitter for a figure of $44 billion but is now trying to back out of the deal.
“In the (hopefully unlikely) event that Twitter forces this deal to close *and* some equity partners don’t come through, it is important to avoid an emergency sale of Tesla stock,” Musk tweeted on Tuesday.
According to Musk, he still owns around 15% of Tesla shares and doesn’t intend to offload any of them in the future. Musk intends to buy more if the Twitter trial ends up having a positive outcome for him.
Tesla shares have been on an upward trajectory recently, jumping 24.30% in the past month. However, the $873.84 per share value still makes the stock 27.17 down year to date.
