Tesla filed five regulatory documents with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) today, showing that CEO Musk sold about 4.415 million shares in two days on Tuesday and Wednesday, that is, April 26 and 27, local time, with a cash amount of about $4 billion.
(The red box is the first trade in the two-day sell-off)
(The red box is the last trade in the two-day sell-off)
Tesla did not respond in the document to the reason why Musk reduced his holdings, but from the time point of view of the reduction, Musk is likely to raise funds for the acquisition of Twitter.
On April 25, local time, Musk officially acquired Twitter for $54.2 per share, totaling about $44 billion.
According to the financing plan previously submitted by Musk, the source of funding for the acquisition of Twitter will include $13 billion in loans and $21 billion in cash. At that time, market analysts pointed out that this part of the cash is likely to come from the sale of Tesla shares to cash out.
(The picture shows the source of funds compiled by the Wall Street Journal according to Musk's financing plan)
At the same time, the financing plan also includes a $125 margin loan, which requires Musk to pledge $62.5 billion worth of Tesla shares as banks need to provide more buffers for higher-valued stocks such as Tesla.
Musk sold and pledged Tesla shares to prepare for the eventual acquisition of Twitter, which brought a direct impact on Tesla's stock price - at the close of the market on April 26, local time, Tesla reported $876.42 per share, a decline of 12.18%, the largest one-day decline since September 2020; the market value of the day was $905.789 billion, a loss of $125.734 billion from the previous trading day.
At present, there is a widespread concern that Musk's acquisition of Twitter will affect Tesla's operation.
On the one hand, the sale of shares may weaken Musk's control over Tesla; on the other hand, tesla executives are not many, in the case of the company's rapid growth, musk is still needed to deal with supply chain challenges, production affected by the epidemic and other challenges, and the acquisition of Twitter will undoubtedly distract its energy, "unless Elon Musk can invent a new way to increase the number of hours worked for a day." ”
However, Musk does not seem to be in a hurry to respond to these concerns. He only symbolically reassured people on Twitter: "After today, there will be no further reduction in Tesla." ”
As for the "today" that has not yet passed, it can probably only be said "we'll see."