Elon Musk has offloaded another 19.5 million of his Tesla shares in a transaction worth $3.95 billion, according to three filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The news caused Tesla stock to close its last trading day in the red, down by around 3%.

Musk Has Sold Around $20B Worth of Tesla Shares Since Twitter Investment

On Tuesday, the Tesla CEO sold 19.5 million Tesla shares at an average price of $202.56 each. While Musk has not addressed the latest sell-off, it is likely that the money will go towards financing his recent $44 billion deal to buy Twitter.

The billionaire initially started unloading his Tesla shares in November after using a Twitter poll to ask his 63 million followers whether he should sell 10% of his stake in Tesla. At the time, he sold approximately $5 billion worth of shares in the electric automaker, accounting for about 3% of his total holdings.

In April, the Tesla boss sold another 9.6 million shares of Tesla stock, worth $8.5 billion at the time. “No further TSLA sales planned after today,” he said. With the most recent sale, Musk has sold around $20 billion worth of Tesla shares since he initially invested in the social media company in April.

Despite selling billions in Tesla shares, the billionaire still had to receive $7 billion from investors including Larry Ellison, founder of the Oracle software group, and major cryptocurrency exchange Binance to finance his Twitter buyout. A consortium of banks also loaned $13 billion to Musk.

Meanwhile, similar to other tech companies, Tesla’s value has taken a hit this year amid sour market conditions and a global market rout. The electric carmaker’s shares have dropped about 46% this year, still outperforming tech giants like Meta which are down by more than 70% YTD.

Tesla Misses Earnings Expectations

Tesla reported its Q3 earnings filing in late October, posting $3.3 billion in profit and $21.45 billion in revenue, falling short of Wall Street expectations. As reported, the company also reported a $170 million impairment loss on its Bitcoin investment.

Tesla sold $936 million worth of Bitcoin, or 75% of its holdings, in Q2 2022. The world’s largest electric vehicle (EV) maker by market cap made no changes to its BTC holdings in Q3 2022 when the value of its digital assets stood at $218 million, unchanged from the previous quarter.

“Digital assets are considered indefinite-lived intangible assets under applicable accounting rules. Accordingly, any decrease in their fair values below our carrying values for such assets at any time subsequent to their acquisition will require us to recognize impairment charges, whereas we may make no upward revisions for any market price increases until a sale.”

Nevertheless, after closing its latest trading day down by around 3%, Tesla is currently in the green. The electric car company’s shares are currently trading at 194.24, up by +1.54%.

This article originally appeared on The Tokenist

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