Elon Musk further fueled concerns among Tesla investors by selling another $3.6 billion of his stock in the electric car company.
Tesla stock was down 3% during a trading period before the market opened Thursday after Musk sold 22 million shares between Monday and Wednesday, according to Reuters.
Investors have questioned whether Musk is dedicating too much of his attention to Twitter, which he purchased for $44 billion in October.
Musk this year has sold nearly $40 billion in shares of Tesla, which ended Wednesday with a market value below $500 billion, its lowest in more than two years, MarketWatch reported.
“The Twitter nightmare continues as Musk uses Tesla as his own ATM machine to keep funding the red ink at Twitter, which gets worse by the day as more advertisers flee the platform with controversy increasingly driven by Musk,” Daniel Ives, an analyst with the Wedbush wealth management firm, reportedly told clients in a memo Thursday.
The turmoil caused some investors to call for Musk, 51, to step back at one of the companies, according to the Washington Post.
“I will make sure Tesla shareholders benefit from Twitter long-term,” Musk tweeted Tuesday.
Musk has repeatedly caused controversy since purchasing Twitter, including firing much of the platform’s staff, sharing a conspiracy theory about an attack on Paul Pelosi and allowing verification for non-public figures.
Twitter recently suspended, then reinstated, an account tracking Musk’s private plane. Last month, Musk tweeted, “My commitment to free speech extends even to not banning the account following my plane, even though that is a direct personal safety risk.”
Musk fell this week to second place on the world’s wealthiest list, according to Forbes. His estimated net worth currently stands at $174 billion, while luxury goods titan Bernard Arnault and his family are said to be worth more than $185 billion.
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