Elon Musk has sold 934,091 shares of his electric car company, Tesla. They are worth around $906.49 million, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission published late Monday. In addition, he exercised options to buy 2.13 million shares at the strike price of $6.24 per share granted to him via a 2012 compensation package.
This was done in accordance with the “Rule 10b5-1” trading plan dated Sept. 14. This type of plan allows company insiders to execute trades in their own company’s stock for a set, future date.
Elon Musk still has a lot of options he needs to exercise by August 2022. He revealed at the 2021 Code Conference on Sept. 28 that he would likely sell a large chunk of stock in the fourth quarter.
In his Twitter poll, Musk wrote: “Much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10% of my Tesla stock. Do you support this?”
He presented his followers with the option of a “Yes” or “No” vote and said he would abide by the results, whichever way the poll went. Twitter’s poll results display said that about 3.5 million responded, with 57.9% voting “Yes.”
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, D-Ore. tweeted after his pole, “Whether or not the world’s wealthiest man pays any taxes at all shouldn’t depend on the results of a Twitter poll,” he wrote. “It’s time for the Billionaires Income Tax.”
More recently, Musk said at The Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council Summit, that “If you zeroed out all the billionaires, you still wouldn’t solve the deficit” in the United States. He also cursed about the “anti-billionaire” sentiment in the U.S.
Musk still needs to sell about another 5 million shares of Tesla to fulfill the promise he made in his Twitter poll.
Earlier this month, the CEO also sold Tesla shares in batches amounting to about $963.2 million, and $1.01 billion worth of stock, bringing his total sold in December to more than $2.87 billion so far. He sold a total of $9.85 billion in Tesla stock in November.
Other Tesla executives like the CFO Zachary Kirkhorn, Chief Accounting Officer Taneja Vaibhav, and Senior Vice President of Powertrain and Energy Engineering Drew Baglino have also sold Tesla shares and exercised options in December.
