Tesla CEO Elon Musk sold 19.5 million shares of the company, worth $3.95 billion. The reason is still unknown, and many speculate that one of the reasons could be the frequent recalls and problems with the cars that caused the stock to drop by 50 percent.
Tesla recently recalled 40,000 vehicles from the US market due to a potential problem with the steering wheel. Before that, they had a security problem when a young man from Germany claimed to have found a weakness that enabled him to control Tesla’s cars from 13 different countries. They also had mechanical problems, such as the case when the Tesla Model 3 suddenly stopped on the highway, causing a collision of several vehicles, which resulted in the death of one person.
This is not the first time Musk has sold a large amount of Tesla stock. In April of this year, he sold shares worth 8.5 billion dollars, while in August he sold shares worth seven billion dollars. The total value of the shares sold is about $20 billion USD.
Musk recently bought Twitter for $44 billion USD, and the first move he made was to lay off half of the company’s seven thousand employees. He said he had no other choice, claiming that the company was losing four million dollars a day. He accused activist groups of putting pressure on advertisers, which caused a big drop in revenue.
He also announced that users will pay eight dollars per month for account verification, but this is currently postponed.
Source: BBC
