After Selling Another $6.9 Billion in Tesla Stock, Musk Says it’s to Avoid an Emergency Sale in ’Hopefully Unlikely’ Event Twitter Forces Purchase, Will Likely Buy Shares Back Later

Elon Musk recently sold $6.9 Billion in Tesla Stock between August 5th and August 9th. According to him the reason for selling off the stock is to avoid an “emergency sale of Tesla stock” if he is held to purchasing Twitter.

Sawyer Merritt asked Musk if he was done selling. Musk responded:

“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.”

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.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 10, 2022

Based on his response to another Twitter user’s question, he does plan on buying back the stock if the Twitter deal doesn’t go through.

Yes

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 10, 2022

When the Twitter deal was originally announced Tesla stock fell on the news as it was speculated he would have to sell Tesla shares in order to fund the deal. As the deal has become much rockier and Musk tried to pull out of the deal completely Tesla stock started to gain ground.

Twitter is not letting the world’s richest man out of the deal as easily as he would like. They are taking him to court in hopes of keeping him to his original offer.

The trial is set for October 17th in the state of Deleware. Musk claims the number of spam accounts on the platform is much more than the 5% claim Twitter makes. However neither have been able to provide definitive proof either way. Twitter dumped lots of information to Musk in an effort to appease his request for proof of the number of spam accounts.

The information didn’t provide enough for Musk to be able to evaluate it and come to a resolution on the matter, this led Musk to pull out of the deal, Twitter countersued and now we await the trial to see what will happen.

Musk may be held to purchase Twitter for the $44 billion he originally offered or they may be able to negotiate a lower price and if that doesn’t pan out it seems unlikely but Musk may be able to walk away from the deal and will probably have to pay penalties for doing so.

Musk holds to the reason for trying to leave the deal as the spam accounts. Some people have speculated that he never really wanted to own Twitter and just wanted to push change which seems like something he may do. His accusations about the number of spam accounts hurt Twitter when it comes to their advertisers as no one wants to advertise to a bot.

Originally it seemed that Twitter wouldn’t accept the deal from Musk however they hold a responsibility to their shareholders which may have ultimately led them to approve the deal. The drama that ensued has brought us to this point it seems it comes down to the pending trial.