Financial Associated Press, April 29 (Editor Niu Zhanlin) According to documents released by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Friday, Musk sold a total of 5.23 million shares of Tesla stock on April 28 at a price of $822.68 to $902.85 per share, worth about $4.5 billion. Musk cashed out more than $8.5 billion in total this week's sell-off.
(Musk stock selling documents, source: SEC)
When the stock was sold on Tuesday, Tesla shares fell 12 percent that day. But by Friday, its stock price had risen more than 6% during the session. In musk tweeted on Thursday (April 28): "After today, there are no further plans to sell Tesla stock." ”
Musk is bidding $44 billion to buy Twitter, and he now needs to come up with $21 billion in cash to fund the acquisition. His financing plan also includes borrowing $12.5 billion in collateral from his holdings of more than $62.5 billion worth of Tesla stock. Tesla and several banks have agreed that Musk will need to provide more collateral if Tesla's stock price falls.
With a mortgage borrowing of $12.5 billion plus more than $8.5 billion in cash, Musk has just $21 billion in cash. According to a regulatory filing released Tuesday, musk will have to pay a $1 billion termination fee if he can't get enough money to complete the deal to buy Twitter.
According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Musk has a net worth of $252 billion, making him the richest man in the world. But much of his wealth involves his companies, including Tesla and SpaceX. Musk paid for equity prizes at Tesla and doesn't get paid in cash, and he sometimes says he doesn't have enough cash.
A regulatory announcement in August last year showed that as of last year, Musk used about 88 million tesla shares as collateral to guarantee his personal debts, accounting for more than half of his holdings.
Musk had been reluctant to sell Tesla stock for years. But he sold more than $16 billion worth of stock last year because he had a large number of stock options that expired this year, and last year's sale was largely to pay the taxes payable on the exercise of those options.