Elon Musk just sold $3.6 billion worth of Tesla stock, his fourth big sale this year

Tesla’s chief executive has sold nearly 22 million shares of the electric-car maker’s stock for $3.58 billion, a filing in the United States showed late Wednesday. The transactions took place between December 12th and 14th.

Tesla shares have plummeted 55% this year as investors grew concerned about Musk’s $44 billion purchase of Twitter Inc., raising concerns about rising interest rates making cars more expensive for consumers and demand woes in China, Tesla’s largest market after the US.

Over the weekend, Musk – who is eager to stoke engagement on the social media platform he now owns – attacked a former Twitter executive, tweeting conspiracy theories that have alarmed even his longtime fans.

Musk tried for months to get out of the Twitter deal but failed. To raise enough money to make the purchase, he gave up more than $15 billion worth of Tesla stock — about $8.5 billion in April, then another $6.9 billion in August. In November, after vowing to be done with the sale, he dumped another $3.95 billion of his stake.

Twitter has big new bills to pay.

Musk used significant amounts of borrowed money, now on Twitter’s balance sheet, to fund the acquisition. Twitter’s debt load has risen to about $13 billion from $1.7 billion before the deal, along with other types of debt that could be converted into stocks.

Twitter now faces nearly $1.2 billion in annual interest payments — which could get even more expensive as interest rates on about half of that debt are unfixed and set to rise with the market.

“At the risk of becoming obvious, beware of debt in turbulent macroeconomic conditions, especially if the Fed continues to hike rates,” Musk said tweeted in this week.

Musk’s recent sales shrink his stake in the company to about 13%, according to Bloomberg data. Musk, who has been Tesla’s CEO since 2008, is still the largest shareholder. At the close on Wednesday, it was valued at $160.9 billion and ranked second on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index after France’s Bernard Arnault. His fortune has shrunk by $109.4 billion this year.