- Kimbal Musk sold around $109 million of Tesla stock a day before his brother Elon posted a tweet that knocked the share price.
- Elon asked his Twitter fans whether he should sell 10% of his Tesla holdings, worth around $21 billion.
- Kimbal and other Tesla directors have seen their wealth balloon as the EV maker’s share price has skyrocketed.
Tesla board member Kimbal Musk sold around $109 million of the electric-car maker’s stock shortly before his brother Elon knocked the share price by asking Twitter if he should sell a big chunk of his holdings.
Kimbal, an entrepreneur who sits on Tesla’s board of directors, made a number of transactions on Friday according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
He exercised his stock options to buy 25,000 shares at just $74.17 a pop. Kimbal then sold 88,500 shares in a number of tranches at an average price of around $1,230, making him roughly $108.9 million.
Elon’s younger brother also donated 25,000 shares – which closed at $1,222.09 on Friday – to charity.
The flurry of transactions came a day before Tesla CEO Elon took to Twitter to ask his more than 60 million followers whether he should sell 10% of his holdings in the company, which would amount to around $21 billion in value.
After Elon’s followers voted “yes”, the stock fell as much as 7% on Monday before closing almost 5% lower at $1,162. It was trading about 1.5% higher at $1,179 in premarket Tuesday.
Analysts said Musk likely faces a large tax bill north of $10 billion from stock options he was awarded in 2012, which have since soared in price. The Tesla boss has previously said he’s likely to sell a large amount of stock before the end of the year.
Kimbal has not been the only director to take advantage of the Tesla’s blistering rally, which has seen the stock price rise around 1,600% over the last two years.
Filings from the end of October showed that directors Ira Ehrenpreis, Robyn Denholm and Antonio Gracias sold shares worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Elon Musk, Kimbal Musk and other top figures at Tesla have seen their personal wealth soar as a result of the stock-market rally. Investors, flush with cash as a result of government and central bank stimulus, have bet that Tesla will lead the green revolution in transport.
Elon is now by far the richest person in the world, with a total net worth of $323 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, up $154 billion this year.
Tesla did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment on Kimbal’s share sale.
