According to reports filed with the Security Exchange Commission, Elon Musk has sold nearly 4 million Tesla shares valued at $4 billion.
Musk tweeted that there were no further TSLA sales for the day, despite the sale of shares being conducted Tuesday and Wednesday.
As Musk, the richest man in the world, moves forward with his plans to buy Twitter for $44 Billion, this sale is complete.
Elon Musk (above), sold almost $4 billion worth of Tesla shares on Thursday
Tesla stock started to plummet on Tuesday after Musk began selling his shares
According to SEC filings Musk (17%) made Tesla shares at prices between $870 per share and $1,000, according to SEC records.
Musk had pledged $12.5 million of his Tesla ownership as collateral for the purchase of Twitter. Investors were concerned that Musk will become too focused on his new acquisition, and Tesla stock dropped earlier.
Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives said Musk’s attention on Twitter and Tesla stock sales were foreboding signs for the company’s future.
Ives said that the Tesla investor cycle is difficult and puts a strain on Musk’s stock. “The Twitter deal has become an albatross to Tesla stock, and it is fueling the fire.”
Tesla shares fell 12 percent on Tuesday when Musk started offloading shares. This was the largest drop since September 2020.
Musk wants to buy Twitter by using his stake in Tesla and an $13 billion loan from lenders. Additionally, he has personal assets worth $21 billion.
According to SEC filings Tuesday, Musk could owe a $1 million termination fee if the company fails to obtain sufficient funds to finish the deal.
Musk could be liable for a breakup fee of $1 billion if Twitter accepts another offer, or shareholders refuse to sign the deal.
Twitter is seeing steady growth as Musk plans to take control, unlike Tesla’s unpredictable week.
Twitter did not meet its revenue expectations in Thursday’s SEC filings. This could be the final quarter of its public quarterly earnings reports.
According to the social media platform, revenue was $1.2Billion for its first quarter. That’s a 16% increase over the previous year, but lower than what Wall Street analysts predicted at $1.23B.
Twitter, a San Francisco-based company, reported that it had 229 million users per day in quarter one, an increase of 16 percent over last year. This is a good sign of growing.
Twitter cancelled the conference call that it usually holds with industry analysts and executives. This means there won’t be any further information about the company’s financial situation.
The company released a statement saying that, “Given Twitter’s pending acquisition by Elon Musk”, they will no longer provide any guidance and would like to withdraw all goals and outlooks.
Elon Musk says he’s moved to the left over 14 years since liberals turned into “woke progressives”: Twitter has seen a exodus among “wokerati” following his $44B merger with Kamala OOC, Bernie and Bernie.
Elon Musk posted a meme on Thursday showing that a moderate Liberal is driven to conservative arms.
This image shows a stick figure labeled “me” remaining static relative to another labeled “conservative”, while the figure at the liberal end moves more and more to the left.
The final diagram is labeled 2021. As the conservative laughs and the liberal, now called ‘woke progressive,’ accuse the centrists of bigotry, the “me” figure to the right of that line.
Musk shared the post without comment, but his political views have taken on new significance after his $44billion deal to buy Twitter and his declaration the platform should be ‘politically neutral’.
Many angry liberals responded to the tweet by claiming that conservatives have become more extremist since 2008 (the year Barack Obama became president).
Elon Musk suggested on Thursday that his political sentiment had shifted to the right over the last 14 years by sharing this meme depicting a moderate liberal being driven into the arms conservatives.
Musk shared the meme uncomment, but after the $44billion purchase of Twitter and Musk’s declaration that Twitter should be “politically neutral”, his political views gained new importance.
Musk’s political views can be contradictory and elusive so he has increased his interaction with conservatives since Monday’s announcement. He also responded to several tweets from right-wing commentators.
In the meantime, conservative influencers saw a significant increase in followers on Twitter since the deal was announced. Public figures to the left suffered sharp declines.
Since the Musk takeover news broke this week, Tucker Carlson (Fox News) and Donald Trump Jr. (Florida Governor Ron DeSantis) have seen an increase in 175,960 and 301,570 followers, respectively.
On the left, Alexandra Ocasio Cortez (AOC), Hillary Clinton, and Ellen DeGeneres witnessed a massive exodus in their respective Twitter followings over the last four days.
Kamala Harris, vice president of Kamala lost 28,000 supporters and Michelle Obama fell a stunning 32,073, while Barack Obama and US President Joe Biden seemed to have seen significant increases in their numbers.
A wave of conspiracies attempted to explain the fluctuation in numbers of followers on each side were triggered by this phenomenon.
Some thought that Elon’s acquisition prompted developers change their algorithms at the social media platform to emphasize conservative accounts and reduce left-leaning. This theory was refuted by others who said that Musk won’t officially close his purchase for the platform until months later.
Others suggested that “woke” Twitter programmers who were accused of suppressing right-wing views by banning and suspending accounts with controversial views, also known as tweeters, modified the algorithm to balance out their past biases in order to mask them.
Twitter stopped its employees from changing the programming of the app in order to stop it from being sabotaged. This theory was also wildly outlandish.
Carrie-Ann Sudlow, a social media specialist and digital marketer has now declared that the phenomena has been organically caused by the different views of Musk and Tesla founders.
It’s not an algorithm issue, or a conspiracy. It’s a world-wide phenomenon when something like that happens. [conservative influencers]She said that people have opinions on the topic and they gain or lose followers based on their opinion,” she explained to DailyMail.com.
This is a major takeover from an extremely influential man. Influence comes with strong opinions. Elon’s fans are divided on whether to support him or not. There is very little in the middle. Elon is making an impact in every area of the world. His skeptics don’t want him to be funded and they abandon Twitter.
“His followers will then rejoice, jump on the back of this news and gain followers.”
This seems to confirm Twitter’s own assertion that the phenomena was caused by Elon Musk supporters and conservative influencers creating additional accounts and left-leaning users deactivating theirs.
“While we are continuing to take actions on accounts that violate the spam policy and can impact follower counts,” said the platform in a statement.
Tucker Carlson of Fox News (pictured), one the most conservative and forthright mouthpieces in America, saw an influx to 175,960 people since Musk’s purchase news broke earlier this week.
Left: Hillary Clinton (L), and Ellen DeGeneres, (R) witnessed a departure of 21424 and 271,141 respectively Twitter followers in the last four days
Twitter’s board on Monday unanimously accepted a $44billion bid from Musk to buy out the company and own it outright.
Musk promised to protect free speech so that the platform can fulfill its potential as the “digital city square” of the world, and relaxed content restrictions while cracking down spam posters and bots.
Musk declared that “free speech is the cornerstone of a functioning democracy” and stated in a statement shortly after his announcement.
However, many users who were left-leaning announced their intention to quit the platform after hearing about the purchase. Others expressed concerns that looser content control could encourage hate speech.
Elon shared his visions of the platform in yet another tweet last night, as well as his plans for it this morning. He stated his fundamental views for user experience and his desire for Twitter to be politically neutral when controlling its content.
Donald Trump Jr, who has 7.7 million followers, saw his followers surge by 87,296 on Tuesday alone – the day following the takeover announcement – and posited the now disproven theory the increase was due to an algorithm tweak targeting prominent conservative voices ahead of Musk’s arrival.
His tweet read: “While my followers are amazing and I deserve 87,000 more per day, it appears that somebody took the shackles of my account. I wonder if the new management is going to burn all of this evidence.
Don Jr.’s Twitter account has seen a rise of between 5,000 to 10,000 tweets per day over the past weeks. The spike that Musk announced was immediately apparent.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis applauded Musk’s bid to acquire Twitter.
Dana Loesch is a conservative talk show host who long complains about account suppression. On Tuesday, her numbers increased by around 9,000.
Comparatively, Musk was only gaining about 100 followers each day.
Ron DeSantis was pictured in Friday’s photo. His followers have seen an enormous increase since Musk’s announcement on Monday.
Barack Obama is the most popular person on the planet. He’s one of few left-leaning mouthpieces and Democrats who have retained their followers or gained more.
AOC is now the least followed left voice in America, especially among Generation Z and millennials.
Musk had approximately 1,000 followers daily before she bought Twitter. But, many of her leftist friends have been inspired to quit the platform by the news that Musk has purchased it.
Ocasio Cortez’s progressive “squad” member, Representative Ilhan Omar from Minnesota, saw her followers plummet by 10,097 just Tuesday.
This is in stark contrast to her previous followers of hundreds, if not thousands on any given day.
Marjorie Taylor Greene (the abrasive Georgia Representative) saw her total rise by 41.181 Tuesday while Matt Gaetz, her firebrand Florida Congressman, rose 24,929.
Taylor Greene posted a list of people currently banned from spreading misinformation or inciting violence under Twitter’s current administration. He claimed that the platform suppressed right-leaning voices, and violated the freedom to speech.
She stated, “Bring Back President Trump.”
‘Bring back my personal account. Robert Malone must be brought back. Alex Jones should be restored.
‘Bring back Milo Yiannopoulos. Restore the nation that was lost. Freedom of speech.
“Bring back America!”
Ilhan Omar, a vocal progressive on Twitter (left), saw her Twitter followers fall too. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgian representative who is abrasive, had her total increase by 41,181 Tuesday.
Twitter reported today that overall revenue and advertising sales fell below expectations due to the continuing war in Ukraine. This highlights the problems Musk will have to overcome if the company is taken over by him.
Although it reported stronger-than-expected user growth in what could be the last quarter as a public company, Twitter shares fell slightly.
Haris Awar, senior analyst with Investing.com, stated, “Elon Musk buys Twitter when the company’s struggling to attract new customers following the pandemic driven surge.”
Twitter’s first quarter user growth was 12 million. This is the largest since the outbreak of the pandemic. It hasn’t been anywhere near this level since then. The number of users added per quarter has varied between 1,000,000 to 7 Million, with 20 million more daily active users during the second quarter 2020.
To reach the 2023 ambitious goals that Twitter set, the company must add 12 million new users each quarter through the end of 2019.
“We are convinced that macro issues will have a major impact on our lives.” [Twitter]Angelo Zino analyst at CFRA Research said that the company is moving further from its 2023 goals. We believe that the Board has made the right decision by approving the Musk deal, given ongoing headwinds in the ad industry. This is because we don’t believe (Twitter’s) ability to extract more shareholder value while it remains public.
Twitter has faced long-standing criticisms for the slow rate of new product launches. Musk tweeted suggestions that ranged from the release of a highly-requested edit button to open-sourcing the Twitter algorithm.
Musk will oversee the closing of the deal for a company with long-standing problems with indecision, internal dysfunction and accountability. This was according to Reuters interviews of a number of former and current Twitter employees.
The number of daily active Twitter users rose from 199million to 229million during the year-ago quarter to March 31, up from 199million a year ago. This figure was higher than analyst estimates of 226.6 million users per day.