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Tesla shares fell by about 3% in morning trading in New York, recovering slightly from a premarket drop of 6%.
“Much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10% of my Tesla stock. Do you support this?” the Tesla CEO posted.
Musk has previously fallen foul of regulators for posting tweets that have moved Tesla’s stock price, without previously consulting the board or fully vetting the material information he was providing shareholders.
In 2018, the SEC charged him with fraud, after tweeting that he was considering taking Tesla private.
Months later, after he was called out for defying the order, the settlement was amended to include a specific list of topics Musk needs permission to tweet about. The list includes tweets about the company’s financial condition, production numbers or new business lines.
Musk receives no salary from Tesla. His 170.5 million shares of Telsa were worth $208.3 billion as of the close of trading on Friday. At the price of $1,222.09 per share, 10% would be valued at $20.8 billion.
He has owned 80% of those 170.5 million Tesla shares since the company’s initial public offering in 2010. In addition, he has the option to buy another 73.5 million shares. It’s not clear if those shares would be counted in his holdings if the Twitterverse convinces him to sell 10% of his stake in the company.
— Ramishah Maruf, Chris Isidore and Clare Duffy contributed to this story.