Elon Musk has sold nearly $7 billion in Tesla stock amid a high-level legal battle with Twitter over a $44 billion buyout deal, according to court filings.
The Tesla CEO sold about 7.9 million shares between Aug. 5 and 9, according to filings released Tuesday on the Securities and Exchange Commission website.
“In the (hopefully unlikely) event that Twitter forces this deal through and some equity partners don’t pull through, it’s important to avoid a fire sale of Tesla shares,” Musk, the world’s richest man, wrote on Twitter late Tuesday .
Twitter is in a legal battle with the moody Tesla boss over his efforts to back out of April’s agreement to buy the company, and a judge has ordered a trial to begin in October.
Musk has filed a countersuit, accusing Twitter of fraud and alleging the social media platform misled him about important aspects of its business before agreeing to a $44 billion takeover.
The move comes after Musk sold around $8.5 billion worth of shares in the electric carmaker in April as he prepared to fund the Twitter deal. He tweeted at the time, “No further TSLA sales are planned after today.”
Tesla is up 3.4 percent to $879 before the start of regular trading on Wednesday, while Twitter is up 4.3 percent to $44.69, Bloomberg reported.
Musk has sold about $32 billion worth of Tesla stock since November.
“He’s cashing in on Twitter,” Charu Chanana, a strategist at Saxo Capital Markets, told Bloomberg News.
Chanana said she believes Musk may seek to capitalize on a roughly 35 percent rebound in Tesla’s stock price since late May.
“The bear market rally has stalled and further Fed expectations re-rating could cause equities more pain going forward, particularly in the tech space.”
Analysts say Musk could continue selling Tesla stock.
“Musk said at the Tesla shareholder meeting that any weakness in the stock price was a buying opportunity, and then 24 hours later began selling shares himself,” Jim Dixon, senior equity sales trader at Mirabaud Securities, told Bloomberg News.
Dixon added that it’s “very unlikely” that Musk is done selling Tesla stock.
Tesla stock prices have been tied to the fate of Musk’s Twitter deal for the past few weeks, first collapsing over concerns that pursuing the deal could distract him and leading to unnecessary financial risk, then bouncing back when he said, he wanted to give up the takeover.
Musk’s deal to buy Twitter included a stipulation that the party breaking the agreement would pay a $1 billion termination fee if it fell apart, under certain circumstances.
With a net worth of $250 billion, Musk tops the Bloomberg Billionaires Index despite losing $20.1 billion year-to-date, mostly due to the fall in Tesla’s share price.
— Bloomberg News contributed to this story —
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