The world’s richest man and Tesla chief executive, Elon Musk has sold an additional portion of his share in his company worth about $687m, regulatory filings revealed this.
Earlier in the week, Musk had sold around $5bn (£3.7bn) of shares in the electric car company days after he asked his 63 million Twitter followers whether he should sell 10% of his stake in Tesla.
On November 11 in multiple transactions, Musk sold 587,638 and 52,099 shares held by his trust according to two separate filings. Tesla shares were up 0.5 per at $1,069 in premarket trading.
The world’s richest person and Tesla’s top shareholder had tweeted last weekend that he would sell 10 per cent of his stock if users of the social media platform approved the move.
In what seems like a first round of share sale, filings showed that Musk’s trust sold nearly 3.6 million shares in Tesla, worth around $4bn, he has also personally sold another 934,000 shares for $1.1bn to cover tax obligations after exercising options to acquire nearly 2.2 million shares
Before now, Musk’s stake in Tesla was about 23 per cent including stock options. Musk has since said he would have to exercise a large number of stock options in the next three months, which would create a big tax bill.