Elon Musk cashes out another $4.8 billion in Tesla stock

Bengaluru - Tesla boss Elon Musk disclosed another US$3.6 billion (S$4.8 billion) in stock sales on Wednesday, taking his total near US$40 billion this year and frustrating investors as the company’s shares wallow at two-year lows.

A United States 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 Mr Musk has cashed out since his US$44 billion 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 Mr 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.”

Mr Musk’s 13.4 per cent stake in Tesla is down from about 17 per cent a year ago, according to Refinitiv data.

Tesla’s stock price has halved this year,

underperforming both automakers and the broader tech-heavy Nasdaq, which is down about 30 per cent this year. The value of Mr Musk’s total selling over the past year comes to nearly US$40 billion.

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

Mr 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 Mr Musk’s management and tweets are attracting political attention and blowback, he also heads rocket company SpaceX and Neuralink, a start-up 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 this year’s vehicle delivery target. It is more profitable than rivals that have struggled to make money from selling electric cars.

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

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