Musk upsets investors as he takes sales of Tesla stock to $40bn

Tesla boss Elon Musk disclosed another $3.6bn in stock sales on Wednesday, taking his total to almost near $40bn this year and frustrating investors as the company’s shares wallow at two-year lows.

A US securities filing showed he unloaded 22-million shares in the world’s most valuable carmaker over three days from Monday to Wednesday.

The sale is the second big chunk of stock he has cashed out since his $44bn purchase of Twitter in October. It is not clear if the sales are related to the Twitter acquisition, but they are annoying investors who are upset by a perception that he is diverting his focus and resources to Twitter ahead of Tesla.

“It doesn’t put a lot of confidence in the business, or speak volumes for where his attention is at,” said Tony Sycamore, an analyst at brokerage IG Markets, where Tesla is a popular stock among small-time investors.

“It’s not a good situation. I’ve spoken to a lot of investors who have Tesla shares and they’re absolutely furious at Elon.”

There was no immediate response to a Reuters request for comment from Tesla and from Musk emailed outside business hours. Musk’s 13.4% stake in Tesla is down from about 17% a year ago, according to Refinitiv data.

Tesla’s stock price has halved in 2022, underperforming both carmakers and the broader tech-heavy Nasdaq , which is down about 30% this year. The value of Musk’s total selling over the past year comes to nearly $40bn.

“It will start to be tiring for investors,” said Tareck Horchani, head of prime brokerage dealing at Maybank Securities in Singapore.

Musk’s fortune, mostly tied up in Tesla shares, has fallen with prices this year and he briefly lost his title as the world's richest person last week — according to Forbes — when he was overtaken by Louis Vuitton boss Bernard Arnault.

Besides Tesla and Twitter, where Musk’s management and tweets are attracting political attention and blowback, Musk also heads rocket company SpaceX and Neuralink, a startup developing interfaces to connect the human brain to computers.

Tesla, meanwhile, is grappling with lingering logistics challenges and said in October it expected to miss its 2022 vehicle delivery target. It is more profitable than rivals who have struggled to make money from selling electric cars.

The latest share sale comes a month after Musk sold shares worth $4bn in the days after he closed the Twitter deal.

Tesla investor Ross Gerber, a strong supporter of Musk, said on Twitter that Tesla should announce a buyback “to take advantage to [sic] the low share price Elon has created”.

Reuters