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Now that the put up-Thanksgiving food coma has aged off, Elon Musk has resumed promoting Tesla shares with remarkable vigor. He exercised choices to pick 2.1 million shares on Thursday, per Securities and Exchange Price filings, and without prolong unloaded 924,091 shares, price about $1 billion, to quilt the tax bill from the transaction.
All informed, Musk has shed about 10.1 million Tesla shares, price almost about $11 billion. Roughly $5 billion of that sum has long gone toward taxes owed from choices exercising; the remaining money—an estimated $4.4 billion after taxes—has long gone into Musk’s pockets.
After taking a week off from jettisoning Tesla shares, Elon Musk has resumed his remarkable promoting spree. ((Describe by Irregular ANDERSEN / AFP) (Describe by ODD ANDERSEN/AFP via Getty Footage)
AFP via Getty Footage
Musk first launched into the promoting spree on November 8, two days after posting a Twitter ballot asking followers if he ought to aloof sell 10% of his Tesla stake, ostensibly in gentle of a temporary-lived legislative proposal that would tax the unrealized inventory positive aspects of billionaires. (58% of the thousands and thousands of respondents voted yes.)
Yet Musk had already deliberate to sell just a few of his Tesla inventory prolonged earlier than that. In mid-September, Musk space up a trading opinion “for the explanation of an easy sale of shares linked to the workout routines of choices scheduled to bustle out in 2022,” SEC filings picture. The manager govt faced a multibillion-greenback tax thanks to the selections. Since remaining month, he’s been chipping away at the 25.5 million choices that had been space to bustle out in 2022, exercising his correct to pick 10.7 million shares and promoting a entire of 4.7 million shares to quilt his tax bill. Musk aloof has more than 14.8 million choices to exercise earlier than the August 2022 time limit.
In the intervening time, he’s been dumping inventory he has held for years as properly. In entire, he has sold 5.4 million shares—almost about 3.2% of his Tesla stake—for some $5.8 billion in pretax money. To hit the 10% brand he promised his Twitter followers, Musk will have to sell a further 11.6 million shares, price about $12.1 billion as of Friday at 11 a.m. in Novel York.
The Twitter-saavy CEO has by no diagram sold inventory esteem this earlier than. Sooner than November, Musk dumped Tesla shares easiest twice: In 2010, he jettisoned roughly 1.4 million shares for $24 million quickly after Tesla went public; in 2016, he sold 2.7 million shares for $593 million, which he weak to quilt taxes he owed for exercising just a few of his Tesla choices.
Per Tesla’s closing inventory brand on Thursday afternoon, Musk’s fortune stands at $282 billion, Forbes estimates, down from more than $300 billion correct earlier than the Thanksgiving vacation. Though the newest inventory sales have boosted Musk’s famously-cramped money pile, his earn price—which is largely tied up in Tesla inventory—has ping-ponged over the previous few weeks per the firm’s inventory brand. Shares are down roughly 17% from where they traded correct earlier than Musk posted his Twitter ballot, representing more than $200 billion shaved from the electrical vehicle firm’s market capitalization.
Whereas Musk is no longer any longer above the lofty $300 billion earn price threshold, he’s aloof miles earlier than the field’s 2d-richest particular person, Jeff Bezos, who currently sports activities an estimated $196.7 billion earn price. French vogue filthy rich particular person Bernard Arnault claims space No. 3, with an estimated $187.1 billion fortune, adopted by No. 4 Invoice Gates, who’s price an estimated $136.1 billion.
