Musk sells 639,737 more Tesla shares after Twitter poll

Tesla Inc CEO Elon Musk disclosed a sale of an additional 639,737 shares of the electric car maker, regulatory filings showed on Friday, after offloading about $5bn (roughly R76,502,500,000) worth of stock following a poll of his followers on Twitter.

Musk sold 587,638 shares held by his trust on November 11 in multiple transactions at prices ranging from $1,056.03 to $1,087.88, according to one of the filings.

A second filing showed that Musk sold an additional 52,099 shares held by his trust at prices ranging from $1,088.01 to $1,104.15 (about R16,000 to R16,894).

Musk, the world's richest person and Tesla's top shareholder, tweeted last weekend that he would sell 10% of his stock if users of the social media platform approved the move. Days after Musk disposed $5bn (roughly R76,511,500,000) of the stock, or 3% of his total holdings, the first such move since 2016.

In the first round of share sale, filings showed Musk's trust sold nearly 3.6-million shares in Tesla, worth around $4bn (roughly R61,209,200,000), while he also sold another 934,000 shares for $1.1bm (roughly R16,832,805,000) to cover tax obligations after exercising options to acquire nearly 2.2-million shares.

Prior to the sales, Musk owned about a 23% stake in Tesla, including stock options.

Musk had previously said he would have to exercise a large number of stock options in the next three months, which would create a big tax bill. Selling some of his stock could free up funds to pay the taxes.