Tesla CEO Elon Musk sold 7.92 million shares of the electric vehicle manufacturer worth about $6.88 billion between Aug. 5 and Aug. 9, according to a series of recent SEC filings.
As of Aug. 9, Tesla shares were valued at about $850 each at the close of trading. That price has fallen by a little over 9% since the close of trading on Aug. 4, when shares were $938 each, according to CNBC tracking.
As for how shareholders would fare longer-term, if you had invested $1,000 in Tesla one year ago, on Aug. 11, 2021, your investment would be up by about 23%, according to CNBC calculations, for a value of around $1,230, as of Aug. 10, 2022.
If you had invested $1,000 five years ago, on Aug. 11, 2017, your investment would be worth around $12,160.
And if you had invested $1,000 on Aug. 11, 2012 and given your investment a decade to grow, you'd have around $145,341 as of Aug. 10, 2022.
Musk's latest sale comes despite his announcement earlier this year that there were "no further TSLA sales planned" after he sold about $8.4 billion worth of his company shares in April.
So what's behind this latest move? The billionaire says it's due to his ongoing legal battle with Twitter.
"In the (hopefully unlikely) event that Twitter forces this deal to close *and* some equity partners don't come through, it is important to avoid an emergency sale of Tesla stock," Musk tweeted, after replying yes to a question about if he was done selling shares.
Back in April, Musk announced his intention to buy the social media giant for $44 billion or about $54.20 per share. As of Aug. 10, Twitter shares were valued at about $44 each at the close of trading. A share of Twitter stock was valued at about $45 on April 14th when Musk made his announcement.
By July, however, the SpaceX CEO told Twitter that he wanted to cancel the deal. In a letter to the company, Musk's lawyers claimed that Twitter failed to provide "information that would allow him 'to make an independent assessment of the prevalence of fake or spam accounts on Twitter's platform.'"
Twitter called Musk's attempt to bail out of the deal a "model of hypocrisy" and said his claims "lack any merit," according to a legal complaint filed by the company.
Although Musk is now pushing for a public debate with Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, the head of the microblogging site said he plans to let the courts decide the fate of this deal, with a trial set to begin in October.
When it comes to the stock market, be sure to do your research before investing and remember that a stock's past performance can't be used to predict future earnings. An alternative option to investing in individual stocks is to invest in the S&P 500, a stock market index that tracks the stock performance of 500 large U.S. companies.
Although the S&P 500 shrank by nearly 6% compared to this same time period last year, the index has grown by 71.94% over the past five years and 198.58% over the past decade, according to CNBC calculations.
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