Bulletins

Elon Musk sold $1 billion in Tesla stock ahead of his Twitter poll

Tesla CEO Elon Musk disclosed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that he planned to sell Tesla stock ahead of a Twitter poll.

Elon Musk gestures with both hands.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk disclosed Wednesday that he sold $1 billion worth of stock in order to cover a potential tax bill.

Photo: Brendan Smialowski / AFP

Days after Tesla CEO Elon Musk asked people in a Twitter poll whether he should sell stock, a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission late Wednesday showed Musk had put in place a plan to sell shares in September.

Musk set the plan to sell his stock Sept. 14, and has sold roughly 900,000 shares worth over $1 billion to cover a tax bill from exercising stock options, according to the filings. Musk disclosed Wednesday that he acquired just over 2 million shares of Tesla for $6.24 each, for about $13 million. The shares were worth more than $2 billion based on Tesla's current share price, and would likely trigger a tax bill for Musk.

Tesla did not immediately return a request for comment.

On Saturday, Musk posted a poll to his Twitter account asking whether he should sell 10% of his Tesla shares, and said he would abide by the poll's results. Twitter users voted by a 58% margin that Musk should sell the stock, but after Wednesday's disclosure Musk retains about 17% or about 170 million shares of Tesla stock, meaning he sold less than 1% of his holdings in this transaction.

Shares of Tesla advanced 2.6% in extended trading Wednesday.

Max A. Cherney

Max A. Cherney is a senior reporter at Protocol covering the semiconductor industry. He has worked for Barron's magazine as a Technology Reporter, and its sister site MarketWatch. He is based in San Francisco.

elon musk
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