Elon Musk sold about 4.5 million shares in electric car maker Tesla this week, or about three percent of Musk’s stake in the company.
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He received more than five billion USD (almost 110 billion CZK) from the sale. This is according to the company’s statement to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). It is Muska’s first sale of the carmaker’s shares since 2016 and came after a poll on Twitter.
Of the total, $ 1.1 billion will go to stock options taxes.
Musk told Twitter users over the weekend that he was not paying a fair share of taxes: “There has been a lot of talk lately that unrealized gains are a means of tax avoidance, so I suggest selling ten percent of my Tesla stock. Do you support that? ” He added that he would submit to the result, whatever it was. 57.9 percent of users voted for the sale of shares.
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Tesla doesn’t pay Musk a cash salary. Instead, it gains huge stock options. “I only have shares, so the only way to pay taxes in person is to sell the shares,” Musk said on Twitter.
The agencies point out that part of the shares sold comes from the high remuneration of 2012 in the form of stock options. These options must be exercised by August next year, otherwise they will expire. Earlier this year, Musk publicly announced that it was likely to exercise these options in the near future. It is thus possible that this application and related sales would take place regardless of the results of the Twitter survey, according to a pre-agreed plan, Bloomberg said.
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The news of the sale caused a drop in stock prices on Monday and Tuesday, but on Wednesday the shares picked up again. This year, Tesla’s shares have gained more than 50 percent. They closed at $ 1,067.95 on Wednesday.
Following the transaction, Musk owns approximately 167 million Tesla shares. According to data from June, according to the AP Musk agency, it was Tesla’s largest shareholder with a share of about 17 percent. According to Forbes magazine, Musk is the richest man in the world, with a net worth of about $ 282 billion. The main part consists of Tesla shares.
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