Musk sells Tesla stock worth $3.5 bn amid Twitter overhaul

San Francisco, Dec 15 (IANS) Elon Musk has sold over 20 million more Tesla shares worth about $3.5 billion and did not provide any reason for selling more stock in the electric car company.

Since November 2021, Musk has sold more than $39 billion of Tesla shares.

After the fresh share sale, according to a form filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Musk now owns about $66 billion worth of Tesla stock.

In April this year, the new Twitter CEO sold off $8.5 billion worth of Tesla stock while in August, he offloaded another $7 billion shares.

The share sale comes at a time when Tesla investors have raised concerns over Musk's $44 billion Twitter acquisition, saying his 24/7 involvement with the micro-blogging platform is "detrimental to Tesla," reports TechCrunch.

Tesla stock has nosedived 60.8 per cent since January this year, and traded at $156.80 after hours on Wednesday.

According to industry analysts, "the fresh stock sell is Musk's answer to some of the high interest debt
he's paying on his $44 billion Twitter deal".

Twitter took on $13 billion in debt as part of that deal, including about $3 billion of unsecured debt on which Twitter pays an interest rate of 11.75 per cent, said the report.

Meanwhile, Musk, who saw his net worth tumble by more than $100 billion in 2022, has been replaced by Bernard Arnault, the chief executive of luxury brand Louis Vuitton's parent company LVMH, as the world's richest man.

China's BYD Auto is now the global market leader, shipping more than 537,000 EV units -- an increase of 197 per cent (on-year) -- in the third quarter this year, leaving Elon Musk-run Tesla far behind globally.