Proactive Investors - Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO Elon Musk’s brother, Kimbal Musk, exercised options this week to cash out $17 million worth of shares in the company.
Kimbal, the younger brother of Elon, sits on the board of the electric carmaker. That would normally make such a transaction impossible, as insider sales are currently prohibited until Tesla reports its quarterly earnings on April 19.
However, a regulator filing published Wednesday revealed that the younger Musk actually lined up the transaction in December, taking advantage of a so-called 10b5-1 plan that allows insiders to sell shares independent of impending key events. That applies even when they have access to material nonpublic information, such as Tesla’s first quarter financials.
Specifically, Kimbal Musk exercised stock options due to expire in June 2025 that granted him the right to acquire 100,000 shares at $24.73 each — a nearly 90% discount to the previous closing price.
The next step was to sell the shares in 11 blocks at prices between $192.78 and $202.64, yielding him net proceeds of over $17 million and leaving him with just over 1.6 million shares.
Kimbal Musk has shown a knack for maximizing the value of his Tesla shares. In November 2021, he sold 88,500 shares of Tesla worth roughly $100 million, timed perfectly with the peak of the US equity market rally.
Tesla shares traded 0.1% lower Thursday afternoon at $185.30.
Kimbal isn’t the only Musk brother with a history of selling Tesla shares.
Over the past one and a half years, Elon Musk sold shares worth nearly $40 billion, first as a political gesture to pay federal taxes and then to fund his purchase of Twitter in October.
However, as Tesla shares started to dip to two-year lows analysts began demanding toward the end of last year that he stops stock sales that are hurting his investors.
Elon Musk pledged in late December not to sell any additional shares for at least this year.