Tesla CEO Elon Musk has again sold part of his shares in the electric car maker, official documents show. The multibillionaire sold another 934,091 shares for a total of $1.01 billion.
Musk sold the pieces to cover taxes on the exercise of 2.1 million stock options. Those options give Musk the right to buy the stock at a specified price. Musk has to pay taxes on the difference between the exercise price of the options and the market price of the shares.
Musk has now sold a total of 10.1 million shares of Tesla and raised about $10.9 billion since he conducted a Twitter poll on Nov. 6 asking if he should sell 10 percent of his Tesla stake. Of course, some of that money goes to taxes.
To reach the 10 percent threshold, Musk has to sell a total of about 17 million shares. If his exercisable options are factored into his overall equity stake in Tesla, he would have to sell even more shares. Musk does not receive a fixed salary as CEO of Tesla, but only bonuses and options based on achieving certain goals.
With a net worth of more than $284 billion, Musk is the wealthiest person in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. His net worth has grown by USD 128.1 billion this year, and Tesla stock has risen 54 percent this year.