Elon Musk sells nearly $7 billion in Tesla stock as Twitter trial looms

With so much of the world’s richest man’s wealth tied up in shares of his electric car company, Tesla is part of the deal Elon doesn’t want to do anymore for more reasons than just a few subpoenas. Six SEC filings (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) revealed that Elon Musk has been selling more Tesla stock in recent days, which is surprising considering Tweet from Musk He said, “No further TSLA sales planned after today,” having sold $8.4 billion in April.

Tesla investor Sawyer Merritt tweeted a tally of Musk’s activity between August 5 and 9, showing that he sold 7,924,107 shares worth approximately $6.9 billion. Just before 11 p.m. ET, Elon responded on Twitterciting the impending lawsuit against Twitter as an explanation for the new plan.

Musk sold those shares earlier this year to help fund the Twitter acquisition, and now that he’s trying to get out of the scheme, they’ll be battling it out in a Delaware courtroom starting Oct. 17. Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal is not responding to Elon’s challenge to a public debate, and there is no word on a pending settlement. Musk now says he has a reason to prepare for “the (hopefully unlikely) event of Twitter forcing this deal to close *and* some equity partners fail.” If that happens, Musk said, he’s trying to avoid an emergency sale of Tesla stock.

Exactly how investors will react to the message that Musk has finished selling (again) is unknown; however, the price of Tesla stock held steady at about $850 in after-hours trading. Wedbush analyst Dan Ives tweetsMusk selling TSLA stock after saying there were no more sales will lead the street to focus on the chances of a Twitter deal and Musk is preparing a cash portion… This stock sale will take many in the morning. spark conversation on the Street for bulls/bears.”