Elon Musk says he won’t sell any more Tesla shares for two years

Elon MuskTesla’s chief executive, said Thursday that he will not sell any more shares in the electric carmaker for two years.

In an audio chat on Twitter SpacesMusk said he expects the economy to hit a “severe recession” in 2023 and consumer demand will be lower.

Tesla shares rose 3% to $129.23 in after-hours trading Thursday, after an 11% drop in regular trading.

Musk has previously vowed not to sell Tesla shares, only to continue transferring them later. Last week, Musk disclosed a $3.6 billion stock sale, bringing the total transactions to nearly $40 billion since the end of last year and frustrating investors as the company’s shares are in the doldrums. minimum of more than two years.

I needed to sell some shares to make sure there is dry powder (…) to anticipate the worst possible scenario,” said the billionaire.

He added that Tesla’s board is open to share buybacks, but that it will depend on the magnitude of a recession.

Musk said that Tesla is close to choosing the location of its new “Gigafactory”. Tesla could announce the construction of a “Gigafactory” in the state of Nuevo León as soon as this Friday, with an initial investment of between 800 million and 1,000 million dollars, the newspaper reported on Monday. Remodeling.

Asked if he would hire someone like venture capitalist David Sacks to run Twitter so he could focus on Tesla, Musk dodged the question, saying Twitter was a relatively straightforward business.

“(Twitter) is maybe 10% of the complexity of Tesla,” Musk said.

Musk has increasingly used Twitter’s live audio platform to weigh in on his products and strategic decisions at the social media company that went private in October in a $44 billion deal.

Some of his appearances have been controversial, such as an exchange with a former Twitter engineer who questioned his apparent plan to rewrite much of the company’s source code.