This is How Much Elon Musk Could Sell in Tesla Shares By the End of the Year

Elon Musk has been selling off his Tesla shares in recent weeks and apparently he could sell as much as $18 billion before the year comes to an end.

Elon Musk sold $906 million in Tesla stock this Monday and as of Tuesday morning he had sold a total of 11.9 million shares says InsiderScore/Verity.

The CEO of the electric vehicle giant as well as SpaceX, is making two kinds of stock sales with one set to pay taxes on his compensation package and the other for straight cash outs, or “to-pocket” sales.

Based on his 10% sale target, Musk will likely only sell another $5 billion before 2021 is finished.

Musk had released a Twitter poll back in November, asking if he should sell 10% of his total Tesla shares. At the time, he owned just over 170 million shares. He would need to sell about 17 million shares to fulfill his Twitter pledge.

His sales have been spread over 680 sales for a total of about $12.7 billion.

Musk has to pay taxes on the exercise of options that expire next summer. As part of a 2012 compensation package, the Tesla CEO was given options on 22.8 million shares that expire in August of 2022.

The options were valued at more than $28 billion when Musk started selling shares, which means his tax bill would have been as high as $15 billion.

In other news, Musk was named “Person of the Year” by Time magazine. The magazine wrote, ““The man from the future where technology makes all things possible is a throwback to our glorious industrial past.” It states, “before America stagnated and stopped producing anything but rules, restrictions, limits, obstacles and Facebook.”

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