Elon Musk sells Tesla stock amid speculation that the Twitter deal will close

Yahoo Finance's Pras Subramanian discusses what Elon Musk selling Tesla stock signals to investors.

Video transcript

- 8 million shares, I believe, is worth about, $6.9 billion that he sold, and this was after he said that he wasn't going to sell any more shares.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: He said he wasn't in any planned sales. So yeah. Late last night, we're watching this on Twitter, as filings come in on Edgar, 6.9 billion worth of shares sold over the last three days. You know, Musk did sell these shares at a recent new-- like kind of like newish high for Tesla, around $900 a share, which is actually pretty good for them. So he did time it kind of right.

He said in a tweet, kind of like, in the event that Twitter forces this deal to close-- this is kind of what we're seeing, speculation of the Twitter deal closing-- and some equity partners don't come through, it is important to avoid an emergency sale of Tesla stock. So we're seeing that he's sort of anticipating a potential forcing of a deal, as this trial begins, on October 17th, between Twitter and Elon Musk. If they do demand like specific performance, like hey, close a deal, he's going to have to do it, or he's going to have to like pay a big settlement to kind of clear that away.

- Does that suggest that maybe he could sell even more? That maybe he saw the stock rebound, and said, all, right I'll sell a little bit right now. But I'll keep some more, in case Tesla stock rises even further, and then maybe cash out even more. Or do you think that $7 billion in the tank is kind of good enough for now? I mean, this is speculation, I imagine.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: Yeah. I mean, he's been raising a ton of money. I think it's been like almost $30 billion in sales, since November. So if he's required to buy Twitter, and it's a possibility-- this might be it, but like you said, he said before, I'm not going to sell anymore, and he did.

So it's hard to say if he would actually do more, and he's got like 15% of the company. So he still owns a lot. The trial is the big is the big factor. I think some analysts were talking about how this is still a big overhang, big problem with Tesla stock and Elon Musk. So we'll see what happens.

- Tesla and Twitter, the story that just keeps giving. Yahoo Finance's Pras Subramanian.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: I'm done with this story, man.

- Well, you're still going to be covering it, though, so don't take a break now. Thanks so much. Appreciate it.