In early November, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who sold more than US$ 15 billion worth of company shares, stated on Wednesday that he was “almost done” with his stock sales. Although, on Tuesday, in an interview with Babylon Bee, he mentioned that “I sold enough stock to get around 10% plus the option excise stuff and I tried to extremely literal here.” However, he seemed to be humming a different tune the following day in a tweet.
As per the Rule 10b5-1 trading plan put in place in September, he exercised stock options that expire the following year and sold a chunk of the stocks to pay taxes, as detailed in Tesla’s filings. Despite a flurry of sales, Musk has approx. 1.5 million stock options that are set to expire in August 2022.
Rewind back to November 6th, Musk said that he would sell 10% of his stake, if Twitter agreed that he should. In doing so, Tesla, who’s shares were near all-time highs, lost approx. a quarter of their value in the time that followed.
On Wednesday, he dispensed with another 934,091 shares, making the total offloaded number of shares to 14.77 million thus far. This is nearly 90% of the estimated 17 million shares he was expected to sell. Out of the 14.77 million shares he’s sold, 9.34 million were done so to pay for taxes related to his exercise options. Earlier this month, Musk moved the company’s headquarters from California to Austin, TX. He stated that California used to be a land of opportunity, but now, he states that California for has become a land of “overregulation, overlitigation, and over-taxation, with it becoming increasing difficult to get things done there.”
According to Musk, his personal tax rate is over 50%, including Federal and state income taxes, and further iterated that the move to Austin was done as he does not face state income tax there. While clearing the air, somewhat, he didn’t fail to take a stab at “Metaverse” which describes shared virtual environments, as not compelling, saying “sure you can put a television on your nose,” that playing videogames with goggles may cause motion sickness. “I think we’re far from disappearing into the Metaverse.”
ABOUT AUTHOR
