Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) shares amounting to US$6.9bn were offloaded by Elon Musk, with the billionaire saying he was carrying out his largest sale on record as he wanted to avoid a last-minute selloff in case he is forced to go ahead with his aborted deal to buy Twitter Inc (NYSE:NYSE:TWTR).
The chief executive of Tesla sold 7.92mln shares on August 5, according to a series of regulatory filings.
Musk responded to speculation on the disposal in a series of late-night tweets, saying he wanted to avoid an emergency sale of stock if he is compelled to complete the US$44bn takeover of the social media platform that he abandoned last month, since claiming to have been hoodwinked.
Responding to a question, the world's richest person said he would buy Tesla shares again if the deal did not close.
The sale comes four months after Musk said he had no further plans to sell stock in the company he built into a global force after disposing of US$8.5bn of stock in his initial bid to acquire Twitter.
Musk's surprise overture earlier this year has tied Tesla's market fortunes to Twitter's, though Tesla's shares have rebounded since their low in May, benefiting from broader gains in US stocks.
Tesla's shares closed Tuesday trading down 2.44% at US$850.00, but are still down 30% in the year to date, having risen roughly 35% from lows in May.
That month, Musk had increased the size of the equity component in the Twitter deal to US$33.5bn and dropped plans to partly fund the purchase with a margin loan.
He terminated the takeover agreement last month, stating Twitter has made “misleading representations” about the number of spam bots on the service.
An October trial in the Delaware Chancery Court has been scheduled for Musk to consummate the deal after Twitter sued to force him to do so.
Musk’s lawyers have issued a subpoena to the company’s advisers, JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) and Goldman Sachs (NYSE:NYSE:GS), in a bid to force them to reveal ‘documents and communications’.
Twitter shareholders are also set to vote on Elon Musk’s bid to buy the platform in a virtual meeting on September 13.