Elon Musk sells 22 million shares of Tesla

The Tesla CEO sold nearly 22 million shares of the electric car maker for $3.58 billion, a filing showed late Wednesday in the US, where the transactions took place between Dec. 12 and 14.

In this regard, Tesla shares have fallen by 55% this year, as investors become increasingly concerned about Musk's purchase of Twitter for $ 44 billion, which increased concerns about high interest rates that make cars more expensive for consumers and problems with demand in China, the largest market for Tesla. after us.

Over the weekend, Musk — eager to stoke engagement on the social media platform he now owns — attacked a former Twitter executive and tweeted conspiracy theories that have irked even his longtime fans.

Offloading Tesla shares for Twitter

Musk tried for months to get out of the Twitter deal but failed, so in order to raise enough cash to buy, he dumped more than $15 billion in Tesla stock — about $8.5 billion in April, then another $6.9 billion in August. In November, after he pledged he was done with the sale, he offloaded another $3.95 billion of his stake.

Musk used large amounts of borrowed money now on Twitter's balance sheet to help fund the acquisition. Twitter's debt load then jumped to about $13 billion, up from $1.7 billion before the deal, along with other types of convertible bonds.

Twitter now faces annual interest payments of close to $1.2 billion — which could get even more expensive given that interest rates on about half of that debt aren't locked in and will rise with the market.