Tesla CEO exercises all his stock options expiring next year

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has reportedly offloaded the final batch of Tesla stock options that expire next year. The move completes the billionaire’s recent share sales, which dragged down the price of his company stock.

According to regulatory filings submitted to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Tuesday, Musk sold another 934,000 shares for $1.02 billion.

The entrepreneur also exercised an option to buy 1.6 million Tesla shares at a strike price of $6.24 per share, granted to him via a 2012 compensation package. So far, Musk has acquired 22.86 million shares through exercising options that are set to expire in 2022, according to calculations provided by Reuters.

Money from the stock sale is expected to be used by the world’s richest man to pay taxes. Musk will reportedly pay about $11 billion in capital gains tax this year.

Last week, he said he’d reach his target of selling some 10% of his Tesla stake “when the 10b preprogrammed sales complete,” likely referring to his options-related stock sales.

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The latest filings confirmed that the “10b5-1 trading plan” was completed on December 28, 2021.

Shares of the electric carmaker lost about a quarter of their value since November, after the eccentric billionaire asked his Twitter followers whether he should sell 10% of his holdings. Tesla stock bounced back to above $1,000 per share, but is still far below the record high of $1,229.91 reached before the Twitter poll.

So far, Musk has offloaded 15.7 million shares in Tesla, coming close to the 10% stake he pledged to sell with 10.3 million of them related to the options exercise. The billionaire sold an additional 5.4 million shares, cashing in on Tesla’s strong rally.

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