By Cristian Bustos. Originally published at ValueWalk.
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA), has sold a further 934,090 shares of the automotive giant worth more than $1 billion, according to filings by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) consulted by Reuters.
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Elon Musk’s Stock Selling Spree
As reported by the press agency, Elon Musk has disposed of 9% of his stake in the company since November 8, for a total amount of $16 million. Specifically, he has sold more than 15.33 million shares —1.53% of the total of Tesla’s outstanding shares— out of the 170.5 million shares he owned.
Previously, Musk held about 17% of the company’s stake, a figure that has now been reduced to 15.45%.
Musk commented in a recent interview that he had already dumped “enough stock,” but later clarified on Twitter that his stock shed “is almost done.”
These operations come after Elon Musk’s followers voted in a Twitter poll in favor of selling 10% of his stake, valued at some $21 billion.
According to CNBC, the 10b5-1 rules allow corporate insiders —including CEOs— to trade their own equity as part of pre-announced portfolio management plan.
“Enough Is Enough”
“They must declare in advance when and how they plan to trade to protect themselves from later accusations of insider trading,” the media outlet underlines.
In an interview to The Babylon Bee, Musk said: “I sold enough stock to get to around 10% plus the option exercise stuff and I tried to be extremely literal here.”
The following day he took to Twitter and posted “This assumes completion of the 10b sale,” and later clarified in a subsequent tweet: “When the 10b preprogrammed sales complete. There are still a few tranches left, but almost done” in a subsequent tweet.
On trading day Wednesday, the company rose 2.09% in pre-market with a price of $1,111.19 per share, compared to $1,088.47 on market closure Tuesday.
Tesla is part of the Entrepreneur Index, which tracks 60 of the largest publicly traded companies managed by their founders or their founders’ families.
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