Elon Musk’s created quite an uproar while taking over the ownership of social media giant Twitter. Musk was clearly prepping for this acquisition for quite some time as he was seen selling his Tesla shares at several intervals. The most recent one, however, occurred just days after his big $44 billion acquisition.
It was recently brought to light that the Tesla CEO had sold a whopping 19.5 million shares of the electric vehicle maker. These shares were reportedly worth $3.95 billion. A US securities filing revealed this data.
It should, however, be noted that the filings did not reveal if the latest transactions were planned ahead.
As mentioned earlier, over the last couple of months, Elon Musk, the richest man in the world was seen bidding adieu to his Tesla shares. Back in April, Musk went on to dispose of a total of 9.6 million shares which were worth $8.5 billion. Once again in August, 7.9 million shares were sold by the Tesla CEO worth $6.9 billion.
He had previously said,
“In the (hopefully unlikely) event that Twitter forces this deal to close and some equity partners don’t come through, it is important to avoid an emergency sale of Tesla stock.”
According to a Reuters calculation, Musk had roughly $20 billion in cash after selling a portion of his ownership in Tesla and would have needed to raise an extra $2 billion to $3 billion to fund his Twitter takeover.
Is Tesla on a downward spiral?
It looks like Musk’s Twitter takeover was taking a toll on Tesla. It was noted that Tesla shares were down by 35 percent ever since Musk announced that he would purchase Twitter back in April.
Elon Musk’s net worth went on to plummet below the $200 billion mark. Forbes reported that Musk’s assets dipped to a low of $195.6 billion. This was mostly due to Telsa dropping to a 52-week low in early morning trading.
Several analysts like Garrett Nelson of CFRA Research believed that Twitter was the reason behind this drop. Nelson added,
“There are growing concerns that Twitter is turning into more of a distraction for Musk than most anticipated prior to the deal closing.”
Additionally, it should be noted that this was only the second time that Musk’s net worth sank below $200 billion. Back in May 2022, Musk’s fortune briefly dropped to $199 billion.