Elon Musk has sold another R8.4 billion in Tesla shares

Elon Musk sold 583,611 shares in Tesla Inc. for $528 million (R8.4 billion), meaning he’s now more than three-quarters of the way to making good on his pledge to sell 10% of his stake in the electric carmaker.

Musk has been offloading Tesla stock since asking his Twitter followers in November whether he should sell some of his stake.

He said he would exercise options toward the end of the year and set up a share-trading plan prior to the poll.

The billionaire has now sold around 13.5 million shares for about $14.1 billion (R224 billion), regulatory filings show.

He’ll need to dispose of some 17 million shares all up to offload 10% of his interest in the U.S.-based EV pioneer, assuming his pledge excludes exercisable options.

Tesla shares have fallen 24% since a peak on Nov. 4, just prior to Musk’s Twitter poll, to which the majority of answered “yes”.

Musk, 50, is the world’s richest man, atop of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index with a fortune of $244.9 billion (R3.9 trillion).

He said in a Tweet late Sunday that he would pay more than $11 billion in taxes this year.

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