Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk has said he will not sell any of his company stock for two years.
The electric car maker’s founder, Mr Musk, said in a Twitter Spaces audio chat that the economy could be in a “severe recession” next year.
Tesla’s board is open to the possibility of a share buyback, but that would depend on the severity of the recession, he said.
The billionaire owner of Twitter and SpaceX has previously pledged not to sell any more Tesla shares until he does the opposite.
In April, he sold about $4 billion in Tesla stock, then said he had “no plans to sell further after today,” but he has sold large numbers of shares several times since.
Last week, he disclosed another $3.6 billion in stock sales.
“I need to sell some stock to make sure, like, there’s dry powder … for the worst-case scenario,” he said.
Tesla shares have fallen nearly 70 percent so far this year as investors worried that Mr. Musk has been consumed by events on Twitter since taking over the platform in October.
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Still, Musk insisted that Twitter is a relatively simple company to run, saying it is “maybe 10% as complex as Tesla.”
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Mr. Musk, who bought Twitter for $44 billion, has vowed to improve the platform by eliminating fake accounts and improving free speech, but it hasn’t been easy.
He’s made a number of controversial policy decisions, and many major advertisers have abandoned the platform amid growing concerns about its direction — and its ability to pay for the $13 billion in debt Musk took on to buy it Pay interest.