Elon Musk‘s string of Tesla Inc. share sales carried on for a fourth-straight day, bringing the total the CEO has offloaded in the wake of an unusual public poll to about $5.7 billion.
The billionaire disposed of 639,737 shares Thursday, worth about $687 million, according to regulatory filings. He unloaded $5 billion of stock earlier in the week after asking his Twitter followers whether he should sell 10 percent of his Tesla stake.
Tesla shares slipped 2.2 percent to $1,031.15 as of 4:16 p.m. in New York, extending losses this week to more than 15 percent.
The poll was controversial for a host of reasons. For one, some of Musk’s transactions were carried out this week under a trading plan he pre-arranged in September, well before he consulted his vast social media following. Musk also cast his proposal as having to do with the debate raging in the U.S. over whether billionaires are paying enough in taxes, and whether levies should be placed on unrealized capital gains.
Musk also didn’t mention in his weekend tweets that he has millions of stock options that must be exercised before they expire in August, 2022. He said in September he was likely to sell “a huge block” of those options toward the end of this year.
The documents disclosing Musk’s sales this week shed no light on whether his poll had any bearing on his decision to carry out some or all of the transactions, or whether he’ll keep selling until he’s met the 10 percent threshold. To get there, he’d have to get rid of roughly 17 million shares, and even more if he also includes exercisable options in his total ownership. He’s now disposed of about 5.2 million shares.
One of Tesla’s most outspoken bulls on Twitter has been critical of how Musk has carried out the sales. Gary Black, a managing partner at investment adviser The Future Fund LLC, has called out the CEO for costing himself money and dragging out the process.
Black tweeted that in four days Musk sold 5.2 million shares at an average price of $1,090, costing himself $500M. “Even the super rich don’t like wasting money,” Black tweeted.
