Elon Musk sells $7 billion in Tesla stocks 

Elon Musk, whose deal to buy Twitter still remains in limbo, has sold close to $7 billion in Tesla stocks. This is despite Musk tweeting in April 2022 that “no further TSLA sales planned after today.”

Musk has said the reason for the sale is that it will “avoid an emergency sale of Tesla stock” in the future. “In the (hopefully unlikely) event that Twitter forces this deal to close and some equity partners don’t come through, it is important to avoid an emergency sale of Tesla stock,” Musk posted to his Twitter on Tuesday.

Musk noted in his recent regulatory filings that he had parted with nearly 8 million shares of Tesla in the past few days.

Forbes Business reported that this sale takes Musk’s total liquidation of Tesla to over $15 billion so far this year, and close to $32 billion over the past 12 months. Musk remains the majority shareholder in both Tesla and Twitter.

Musk has stated that he is still willing to proceed with he deal to buy Twitter, however this remains contingent on satisfactory tests regarding the number of “bot” accounts on Twitter. Musk has accused Twitter of making “misleading representations” of how many bot accounts are on their platform.

“If Twitter simply provides their method of sampling 100 accounts and how they’re confirmed to be real, the deal should proceed on original terms,” Musk Tweeted. “However, if it turns out that their SEC filings are materially false, then it should not.”

The Twitter sale had a contingency where a termination fee of $1 billion would be payable by any party who broke the deal, in certain circumstances. Legal experts are split on whether Musk’s issue about bots will be enough for him to walk away from the deal with no financial penalties.

Twitter shares were up 3.74% at the close of Wednesday, but their current share price of $44.42 is still below the $54.20 Musk agreed to pay.