Tesla’s Elon Musk Off Loads Another $1B in Tesla Shares

Tesla founder Elon Musk is getting closer and closer to nearing his 10% target of selling off shares of the electric vehicle maker.

The CEO of Tesla as well as SpaceX, has sold another $1 billion shares this week.

Musk sold another 934,090 shares, or about $1.02 billion worth of his holdings, in his electric car company according to financial filings published late Tuesday.

Since Nov. 8, Musk has been on a selling spree in order to pay a big tax bill that he expects will be at least $11 billion.

Earlier this month, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., tweeted that Musk was “freeloading off everyone else,” since he didn’t pay federal income taxes in 2018.

By some estimates, Musk still has more than a million more shares to sell to reach his 10%.

Musk also exercised options to buy nearly 1.6 million Tesla shares at a strike price of $6.24 per share, granted to him via a 2012 compensation package.

In exercising his options this quarter, the CEO’s holdings in Tesla have increased from about 170.5 million shares to over 177 million shares, according to the Wall Street Journal.

It was in November that Musk had asked his tens of millions of Twitter if he should sell 10% of his stake. They voted yes.

Under 10b5-1 rules, corporate insiders can trade their own equity as part of pre-announced portfolio management plan. They must declare in advance when and how they plan to trade to protect themselves from later accusations of insider trading.

Tesla shares have risen more than 54% in 2021, helping Musk surpass Amazon’s Jeff Bezos as the world’s wealthiest person Musk’s net worth is roughly over $275 billion according to estimates from Forbes.

That wealth is derived from Musk’s ownership stakes in Tesla and SpaceX.

Disclaimer: We have no position in any of the companies mentioned and have not been compensated for this article.