(Bloomberg) -- Elon Musk sold $6.9 billion of shares in Tesla Inc. according to regulatory filings Tuesday, the first time he has sold stock in the carmaker since dropping his bid to buy Twitter Inc.
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Tesla’s chief executive officer offloaded the shares on Aug. 5, according to the new filings. Musk has now sold around $32 billion worth of stock in the electric-car maker in the past 10 months. The purpose of the latest sales wasn’t immediately clear.
Tesla’s stock slumped late last year as Musk offloaded more than $16 billion worth of shares, his first sales in more than five years. The disposals started in November after Musk polled Twitter users on whether he should trim his stake.
The shares have risen about 35% from their recent lows in May.
With a $250.2 billion fortune, Musk is the world’s richest person, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. His wealth has fallen $20 billion this year as Tesla shares fell from around $1,200 at the start of the year.
Musk May Keep Selling Tesla, With or Without Twitter: MLIV Pulse
Musk last month said he’s terminating his $44 billion agreement to acquire Twitter and take it private, saying the company has made “misleading representations” over the number of spam bots on the service. Twitter has since sued to force Musk to consummate the deal, and a trial in the Delaware Chancery Court has been set for October.
On the weekend, Musk tweeted that if Twitter provided its method of sampling accounts to determine the number of bots how they are confirmed to be real, “the deal should proceed on original terms.”
In May, Musk dropped plans to partially fund the purchase with a margin loan tied to his Tesla stake and increased the size of the equity component of the deal to $33.5 billion. He had previously announced that he secured $7.1 billion of equity commitments from investors including billionaire Larry Ellison, Sequoia Capital and Binance.
(Adds state of Twitter deal from sixth paragraph.)
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