Izuchukwu Okosi
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Tesla chief executive Elon Musk late Wednesday night fulfilled his pledge to sell 900,000 shares of his electric car company’s stock for 1.1 billion dollars, about N451,649,000,000.00 (Four Hundred and Fifty One Billion, Six Hundred and Forty Nine Million Naira) to abide by a Twitter poll he conducted last week.
Mr Musk had called on his followers to vote on whether he should sell 10% of his holdings in the company, and consequently a total of 57.9% of the 3.5 million votes were cast supporting a sale.
The sales, disclosed in two regulatory filings late on Wednesday according to several English media outlets report, will cover tax obligations for stock options granted to Mr Musk in September.
He exercised options to buy just over 2.1 million shares for 6.24 dollars (£4.66) each. The company’s stock closed on Wednesday at 1,067.95 dollars (£796.72) per share.
The transactions were “automatically effected” as part of a trading plan adopted on September 14 to sell options that expire next year, according to forms filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
That was nearly two months before he floated the idea of the sale on his Twitter page.
After the transactions, Mr Musk still owns about 170 million Tesla shares.
A tenth of Mr Musk’s Tesla holding is worth around 20 billion dollars (£14.92 billion) and the poll on Twitter caused a sell off of the stock on Monday and Tuesday, but it recovered some on Wednesday.
Wedbush Analyst Daniel Ives said it appears Mr Musk will start selling shares as the year ends.
“The question will be for investors if he sells his full 10% ownership stake over the coming months or is it done piece-by-piece during 2022?,” he said.
Izuchukwu Okosi is a Nigerian sports and entertainment journalist with two decades of experience in the media industry having begun his media journey in 2002 as an intern at Mundial Sports International (MSI) and Africa Independent Television (AIT), owners of Daar Communications Plc.
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