Twitter Shares Rise After Elon Musk Sells Tesla Stock
August 10 2022 - 7:15AM
Dow Jones News
By Will Feuer
Twitter Inc. shares rose closer to the price at which Tesla Inc.
Chief Executive Elon Musk initially agreed to buy the social media
company after Mr. Musk disclosed his sale of some $7 billion worth
of Tesla shares.
Twitter stock rose 4% to $44.56 a share in premarket trading. In
April, Mr. Musk agreed to buy Twitter for $54.20 a share, but the
stock has since fallen from the deal price after Mr. Musk expressed
interest in abandoning the deal.
On Tuesday, Mr. Musk disclosed that he sold around 7.9 million
shares, worth nearly $7 billion, between Friday and Tuesday,
leaving him with a 15% stake in the electric car company.
The Tesla boss has been on a selling spree over the past year,
during which he has cashed out roughly $32 billion worth of shares
in the electric-vehicle maker. That includes around $8.5 billion of
sales in April, while Mr. Musk was lining up financing to take over
Twitter. At the time, he tweeted: "No further TSLA sales planned
after today."
Asked on Twitter if he was done selling shares, Mr. Musk
tweeted, "Yes."
"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," he said on
Twitter.
Twitter is suing Mr. Musk in an effort to force him to go
through with the agreed-on takeover, which Mr. Musk has sought to
abandon. The case is headed to court in October. If the judge were
to force Mr. Musk to consummate the deal, he could be on the hook
for more than $33 billion in equity financing, according to a
regulatory filing.
Mr. Musk already owns a roughly 9% stake in Twitter.
Co-investors, which include a Saudi prince, Larry Ellison, and a
bitcoin exchange, have offered to pitch in about $7 billion for a
stake in the $44 billion buyout.
Write to Will Feuer at Will.Feuer@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
August 10, 2022 07:00 ET (11:00 GMT)
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