Elon Musk may need to sell $10B worth of Tesla stock to finance Twitter takeover - Wedbush
Scott Olson

The headache for Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) shareholders stemming from Elon Muskâs bid for Twitter (TWTR) is far from over, according to Wedbush analyst Dan Ives.

Ives said that the $44B price tag for the social media player is âsimply a train wreckâ and about $14B above what he sees as fair value. Indeed, Musk himself said during the automakerâs earnings call on Wednesday that he, and other investors, âare obviously overpaying for Twitter.â

While Musk has already sold billions worth of Tesla (TSLA) stock to help fund the deal, the shaky outside financing of the blockbuster deal should have investors in the EV leader apprehensive, according to Ives. In his view, Musk could be forced to make billions more in sales before he can declare âfunding secured.â

âIt's pretty simple, the more investors that bail on this deal, the more money that Musk needs to contribute and therefore sell more Tesla stock,â Ives told clients on Friday. âThis continues to be a brutal situation for Tesla investors to bear the burden as we believe Musk might need to sell an additional $5B to $10B range to fund this deal depending on the financing talks this week/weekend.â 
The Delaware Chancery Court recently set October 28 as the hard deadline for the deal to close.