Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, sold shares of the electric carmaker on Wednesday, shortly after conducting a Twitter poll. Based on the results of a Twitter poll he conducted over the weekend, he disclosed selling 10% of his Tesla interests, valued at more than $20 billion by most estimates.
He was asked to sell the stock by 58 percent of the more than 3.5 million votes cast.
Much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10% of my Tesla stock.
Do you support this?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 6, 2021
Musk exercised 2.15 million options on Monday at a price of $6.24 per contract, according to regulatory filings, and then sold 934,000 shares for $1.1 billion, Bloomberg said.
According to Bloomberg, the shares were sold “solely to meet the reporting person’s tax withholding obligations linked to the exercise of stock options” as stated in regulatory filings.
The contracts were awarded to Musk in 2012 and were slated to expire in August of the following year. Musk’s fortune is largely made up of Tesla stock, which does not pay him a salary in cash.
The volatile billionaire, whose net worth is estimated to be around $300 billion, said he was considering selling the stock since some Democrats have been pushing for billionaires to pay taxes on stock gains even if they don’t sell any.
However, in President Joe Biden’s budget, which is still being negotiated, the term on unrealized gains, popularly known as a “billionaires tax,” was omitted.
Tesla has been on a tear recently. Since last month, when the company posted a record profit for the third quarter, the company’s shares had surged more than 40%. Tesla stock achieved an all-time high of $1,229.91 per share last week. With a market capitalization of more than $1 trillion, it is the world’s most valuable carmaker. The stock dropped 4.8 percent to $1,162.94 on Monday. It’s still up about 65% year to date.
