Elon Musk: Tesla boss sells $ 5 billion in stock after Twitter poll

Tesla chief executive Elon Musk has sold around $ 5 billion (£ 3.7 billion) of shares in the electric carmaker.

It comes days after he asked his 63 million Twitter followers if he should sell 10% of his stake in Tesla.

The company’s shares fell roughly 16% in the two days following the publication of the poll in favor of its share sale, before recovering some ground on Wednesday.

Tesla is the most valuable automaker in the world, with a stock market valuation of over $ 1 trillion.

Musk’s Trust sold nearly 3.6 million Tesla shares, worth about $ 4 billion.

It also sold an additional 934,000 shares for approximately $ 1.1 billion after exercising options to acquire nearly 2.2 million shares, according to filings with the US stock market regulator.

Documents showed that the sale of about one-fifth of the shares was made under a pre-established trading plan set up in September, long before Musk’s social media posts over the weekend about the sale of some of his shares.

However, the regulatory deposits also showed that the sale of the rest of the shares had not been scheduled.

On Saturday, Musk posted a poll on Twitter asking his followers to vote on whether he should sell part of his stake in Tesla to meet his tax obligations.

“There has been a lot of talk lately about unrealized gains as a means of tax avoidance, so I propose to sell 10% of my Tesla stock,” he tweeted.

“I will respect the results of this poll, however it goes.”

The poll attracted more than 3.5 million votes, with nearly 58% in favor of selling the shares.

Musk also pointed out that he is not paid in cash by Tesla: “I only have shares, so the only way to pay taxes personally is to sell shares.”

Part of the latest transaction saw him exercise the stock options awarded to him by the automaker in 2012 as part of his compensation package.

Such transactions trigger income taxes, which are typically settled using money raised from the immediate sale of some of the newly acquired shares.

It was his first share sale since 2016, when he last exercised stock options. He also sold some of the shares at the time to cover an income tax of nearly $ 600 million.

Musk is the richest person in the world, with a personal fortune estimated at over $ 280 billion.