Status: 15.12.2022 10:35 a.m
Twitter new owner and Tesla boss Elon Musk has parted ways with a large Tesla share package. Is Tesla suffering from Musk’s commitment to the short message service? In any case, investors are upset.
Elon Musk sold nearly 22 million Tesla shares between December 12 and December 14 for a total of nearly $3.6 billion. This emerges from a mandatory notification published yesterday. With the latest sale, Musk sold shares in the electric car manufacturer he founded with a total value of almost $ 40 billion last year.
According to figures from the data provider “Refinitiv”, Musk currently still holds a 13.4 percent stake in Tesla. About a year ago it was around 17 percent.
Is Musk distracted?
The billionaire is currently investing a lot of money and time in another project: In October, Musk acquired the Twitter news service for around $44 billion.
Whether Tesla’s sales are directly related to the Twitter purchase is unclear. So far, neither Tesla nor Musk have responded to a Reuters request.
For Tesla investors, however, the sales are bad news because they have a negative impact on the carmaker’s share price – and thus directly on the assets of the investors. Shares in the world’s most valuable automaker have been among the worst-performing major automakers and tech companies this year. They have fallen by more than half since April.
No longer the richest man in the world
This also has an impact on Musk’s wealth: Forbes magazine estimated it at $ 174 billion last week. This puts Musk behind French fashion and cosmetics entrepreneur Bernard Arnault in second place on the list of the rich.
In addition to the financial loss, investors are primarily concerned about Musk’s commitment to Tesla. It is feared that his attention may be diverted by the Twitter purchase. It’s not a good situation, says Tony Sycamore, market watcher at IG Markets. “I’ve spoken to a lot of Tesla investors and they’re very angry with Elon,” Sycamore said.
Twitter suspended account
In fact, Musk’s attention is clamped by the situation on Twitter. The entrepreneur at the short message service is also busy with his own affairs.
Twitter has now blocked an account with publicly available flight data from Musk’s private jet. The account was created by college student Jack Sweeney, who used an automated computer bot to evaluate publicly available flight data to determine and document the flight movements of Musk’s jets.
Musk explained in a tweet on Wednesday evening that the bot account, which had been deactivated a few hours earlier, violated the Internet platform’s user guidelines. The Twitter boss announced in November that he was so committed to freedom of speech that he allowed the account, even though it posed a risk to his security.
Committed to freedom of speech?
When Musk took over Twitter, the goal was to relax strict content restrictions. For example, he unblocked the accounts of celebrities like ex-President Donald Trump who had been blocked for violating rules protecting against hate speech, harmful disinformation or incitement to violence.