Elon Musk sells another $906.5 million worth of Tesla shares

SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk sold another 934,091 shares of his electric car company, which are worth around $906.49 million, according to a pair of financial filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission published late Monday.

He also exercised options to buy 2.13 million shares at the strike price of $6.24 per share granted to him via a 2012 compensation package.

Shares of Tesla closed down 5% at $966.41 on Monday.

The latest insider transactions by the Tesla CEO and centi-billionaire were part of a “Rule 10b5-1” trading plan dated Sept. 14, the filings said. This type of plan allows company insiders to execute trades in their own company’s stock for a set, future date.

Musk, who is the wealthiest person in the world and who was just named Time Magazine’s 2021 Person of the Year, still has millions of stock options that he needs to exercise by August 2022. He revealed at the 2021 Code Conference on Sept. 28 that he would likely sell a large chunk of stock in the fourth quarter. 

Ever the showman, on Nov. 6, Musk asked his legions of Twitter followers to vote on whether or not he should sell a 10% chunk of his holdings in the electric car and solar business. In his Twitter poll, Musk wrote: “Much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10% of my Tesla stock. Do you support this?”

He gave his tens of millions of followers the option of a “Yes” or “No” vote, and said he would abide by the results, whichever way the poll went. Twitter’s poll results display said that about 3.5 million responded, with 57.9% voting “Yes.”

After Musk’s poll, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, D-Ore. wrote in a tweet of his own, “Whether or not the world’s wealthiest man pays any taxes at all shouldn’t depend on the results of a Twitter poll,” he wrote. “It’s time for the Billionaires Income Tax.”

Musk, who is against a billionaire’s tax and President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better spending, responded to Wyden with a crude retort.

More recently, Musk said at the Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council Summit, that “If you zeroed out all the billionaires, you still wouldn’t solve the deficit” in the United States. He also cursed about the “anti-billionaire” sentiment in the U.S.

Musk still needs to sell about another 5 million shares of Tesla to fulfill the promise he made in his Twitter poll.

Earlier this month, the CEO also sold Tesla shares in batches amounting to about $963.2 million, and $1.01 billion worth of stock, bringing his total sold in December to more than $2.87 billion so far. He sold a total of $9.85 billion in Tesla stock in November.

Besides Musk, Tesla execs including CFO Zachary Kirkhorn, Chief Accounting Officer Taneja Vaibhav and Senior Vice President of Powertrain and Energy Engineering Drew Baglino have also sold Tesla shares and exercised options in December.