Elon Musk has sold another $3.58bn (€3.4bn) of Tesla shares, bringing the total amount he has offloaded since late last year to almost $40bn.
he latest disposal of about 22 million shares this week coincided with Mr Musk falling from the top spot on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, a position he had occupied since September of last year. Tesla’s market value also slumped below the half-trillion-dollar mark for the first time since November 2020.
Mr Musk’s persistent selling after repeated assurances that he was done unloading Tesla stock reflects mounting pressure on the finances of Twitter. His erratic and impulsive approach to running the social-media company has alienated advertisers, and efforts to bring in more revenue from subscription fees backfired when impostor accounts exploited a poorly executed rollout of verification badges.
The chaos at Twitter has been an overhang on Tesla, which is facing its own set of challenges. The electric-car maker has cut prices and production this quarter in China and taken the rare step of offering incentives in the US. Musk has said the company is struggling to cope with the effects that China’s slumping property market, Europe’s energy crisis and the Federal Reserve’s interest rate increases are having on demand.
Tesla shares rallied as much as 2pc in New York. The stock has plunged 55pc this year.
Mr Musk tried for months to get out of the Twitter deal. To help finance the purchase, he offloaded more than $15bn of Tesla shares.
