Elon Musk Sold Roughly $8.4 billion Worth of Tesla Shares This Week to Buy Twitter

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Elon Musk sold about $8.4 billion worth of Tesla shares this week, following his move to take Twitter private, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO unload roughly 4.4 million shares of his electric vehicle company in trades. New filings showed sales of an additional 5.2 million shares on Thursday.

The first of the CEO’s sales were made on Tuesday, the filings showed. Tesla shares plunge 12% that day. 

As the filings became public, Musk wrote on Twitter, “No further TSLA sales planned after today.” He made the remark in response to an account that heavily promotes Tesla stock, products, and Musk on the social network.

Musk is willing to buy Twitter and take the social platform private for $54.20 per share, around $44 billion total. In order to do it, Musk secured $25.5 billion of fully committed debt, including $12.5 billion in loans against his Tesla stock.

Musk would have to pay Twitter a termination fee of $1 billion if he fails to secure enough funding to complete his deal to buy the social media business, according to a regulatory filing out Tuesday.