Is Musk All in on Twitter? Billionaire Makes Major Move with Tesla

Before the market opened on Thursday, shares of Tesla were down after it was revealed that CEO Elon Musk had sold further shares of the electric vehicle manufacturer’s stock worth $3.58 billion this week.

In premarket trade, the stock dropped to $153, approaching two-year lows.

According to a document made Wednesday night by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Musk, the new owner of Twitter, sold the shares between Monday through Wednesday. It was unclear how the money was being used.

Since April, Musk has sold roughly $23 billion worth of Tesla stock, with the majority of the proceeds likely going toward his $44 billion purchase of Twitter. According to regulatory documents, he sold Tesla shares worth close to $4 billion at the beginning of the month.

The transaction occurs as shares of the manufacturer of solar panels and electric vehicles have plummeted, dropping more than half of their value since Musk first revealed in April that he was accumulating Twitter stock.

Concerns have been raised by Wedbush analyst Dan Ives in a client letter as Musk appears to be shifting the focus of the Tesla story away from the fundamental revolution of the electric vehicle industry and toward becoming a source of funding for his acquisition of Twitter.

According to Ives, “The Twitter nightmare continues as Musk uses Tesla as his own ATM machine to keep funding the red ink at Twitter which gets worse by the day as more advertisers flee the platform with controversy increasingly driven by Musk.”

According to Forbes, Musk’s net worth dropped to $174 billion as a result of the plummeting Tesla stock, knocking him off the list of the richest people in the world. French fashion and cosmetics tycoon Bernard Arnault passed him last week. Tesla Inc. stock is where the majority of Musk’s fortune is invested.

The acquisition of Twitter has not gone well, and some major corporations have stopped running advertisements on the social media site. According to Musk, the loss of advertisers caused “a massive drop in revenue” for Twitter.

Since Musk has been spending a lot of time managing Twitter, investors have been penalizing Tesla shares, fueling concerns that he is neglecting his duties at the automaker.

On Wednesday evening, a message asking for comment on the stock transaction was left with Tesla.

More on this story via The Western Journal