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Elon Musk Sells $8.4 Billion in Tesla Stock to Fund Twitter Takeover

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variety.com

Todd Spangler NY Digital EditorUPDATED: Elon Musk this week reaped $8.4 billion in a series of stock sales of Tesla, the electric car company he heads, evidently as part of raising money for his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter.Musk, , the world’s richest individual, sold more than 4.4 million shares of Tesla on April 26 and 27 at various prices of about $870-$1,000 per share, according to SEC insider transaction filings Thursday.

Additional disclosures Friday showed that he sold another 5.4 million Telsa shares on April 28. The stock sales came after Twitter announced that its board had accepted the billionaire’s $54.20/share bid.

He still owns about 163 million Tesla shares.On Thursday evening, Musk tweeted, “No further TSLA sales planned after today.” The $46.5 billion in financing that Musk lined up for the Twitter takeover, including from banks led by Morgan Stanley, comprises $21 billion in cash, $13 billion in debt facilities and $12.5 billion in margin loans, the last of which are secured against Musk’s Tesla holdings.Through Thursday, Tesla shares had fallen more than 23% since Musk first disclosed amassing a 9.2% stake in Twitter in early April.

On Friday, after the stock sale disclosure, Tesla shares were up more than 3% in early trading.Last year, Musk sold more than $15 billion worth of Tesla stock, mainly to pay taxes on vested stock options that he exercised before they would have expired.Musk, who also is the CEO of SpaceX, has said he wants Twitter — the “digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated”– to uphold principles of “free speech” and has accused Twitter of censoring conservative viewpoints.

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