Tesla (TSLA) shares bumped higher Wednesday following news from late last night that CEO Elon Musk had sold around $7 billion worth of stock in order to set aside funding for his disputed takeover of Twitter (TWTR).
Securities and Exchange Commission filings show Musk sold 7.92 million shares, netting around $6.9 billion, between August 5 and August 9. He still owns around 155 million shares, of 15% of the clean energy carmaker following sales of around 8.5 billion in early April.
Musk said he wanted to avoid an "emergency sale" of Tesla stock if, "Twitter forces this deal to close *and* some equity partners don’t come through" on the $44 billion transaction, and took advantage of a 47% rally in Tesla shares from late May to August 5, when the first sale was made.
He added that he would buy the stock back if the Twitter deal, which goes before a Delaware court judge in mid-October, ultimately collapses.
Tesla shares were marked 2% higher in late-morning trading Wednesday to change hands at $868.20 each. Twitter shares, meanwhile, jumped 3.4% to $44.30 each.
Musk has been locked in public dispute with Twitter since early July over the amount of so-called "fake" or "bot" accounts on the social media platform, which he says constitute a material change to the merger terms he agreed in the spring.
Twitter, for its part, is suing Musk to force him to purchase the group for $44 billion, or $54.20 per share, arguing in court papers published last week that the idea of a "billionaire founder of multiple companies, advised by Wall Street bankers and lawyers" was "hoodwinked into signing a $44 billion merger agreement" is "as implausible and contrary to fact as it sounds".
Late last month, Twitter posted a surprise second quarter loss as it navigated a slowdown in global ad spending and the uncertainly linked to Musk's disputed takeover.
Group revenues fell 1% to $1.14 billion, again coming in shy of the Street forecast of a $1.315 billion tally, which Twitter said was "reflecting advertising industry headwinds associated with the macroenvironment as well as uncertainty related to the pending acquisition of Twitter by an affiliate of Elon Musk".
