If you haven't already heard, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk was recently interviewed by The Babylon Bee. Musk sometimes shares the satirical publication's work on Twitter. For those who haven't watched the interview, it's fun, funny, full of interesting morsels, and arguably worth watching whether you're a fan of Musk or not.
Musk has been selling stock in order to pay taxes on options that he's exercising. He took to Twitter some time ago to ask his followers if he should sell 10% of his stock, though it seems he already had a plan in place to do so. Since then, Musk has been selling weekly, and Tesla's share price has plummeted.
During the recent interview, Musk said he has sold enough stock. He didn't say he's done selling, and he didn't reveal exactly how much he's sold, but he did make it seem as though he won't be selling more in the near term.
People can easily look at filings or follow those "in the know" on Twitter to learn how many shares Musk has sold. While it's not yet at the 10% he previously mentioned, it's getting close. Musk also recently tweeted that he'll pay over $11 billion in taxes for 2021, which is reportedly a record for any taxpayer in US history.
In the interview with The Babylon Bee, Musk said:
"I sold enough stock to get to around 10% plus the option exercise stuff and I tried to be extremely literal here."
According to Electrek, Musk recently exercised 2 million more options, which add up to the tune of some $1.9 billion, and sold about 584,000 of the shares.
The publication goes on to say that the CEO has sold 13.5 million Tesla shares since the infamous Twitter poll. At the same time, Musk exercised 16.4 million Tesla stock options that were promised to him as part of an earlier CEO compensation agreement. As we've reported in the past, Musk is buying more shares than he's selling.
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We aren't financial experts at InsideEVs, and this isn't something we really follow or fully understand. Feel free to provide your insight in the comment section below.
Sources: The Babylon Bee (YouTube), Electrek