Elon Musk has sold Tesla shares for nearly a billion euros

Tesla founder Elon Musk on Monday sold shares in the electric car maker for $1.1 billion (958 million euros) after he announced on Saturday his intention to sell a 10% stake.

According to documents filed on Wednesday with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the world’s richest man sold about 930,000 shares on Monday alone.

On Saturday, Musk conducted a survey of his followers on the social network Twitter about the possibility of selling 10% of the 17% he owns in the company, which could earn him more than $ 20 billion (approximately 17.5 billion euros). About 57.9% of the 3.5 million followers answered in favour.

On Monday, at the open of Wall Street, the company’s shares fell 7.2 percent as the market feared that Musk would go ahead with the sale, unbalancing supply and demand for the electric car maker’s shares.

For this reason, the shares were sold at a much lower price than they would have been without the Twitter ad, with the entrepreneur losing tens of millions of dollars in unrealized profits in the process.

The document submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission also reveals that the businessman had already begun selling on September 14, so he did not make a decision based on Twitter’s inquiry.

At the end of the deal, Elon Musk still owned 1.22 million shares of Tesla and another 170.4 million in a trust fund (trust fund), totaling $183 billion (€159.4 billion), at Wednesday’s closing price, according to the document submitted to the Supreme Council. for education.

On Monday, the Tesla founder also exercised a call option on 2.15 million shares, allowing him to buy the same number of shares at $6.24 per share, less than 1% of their current value.

On Tuesday, Tesla pulled the Nasdaq Index as it continued its steep decline of 11.99% due to Musk’s announcement. On Wednesday, shares rose again, closing 4.34% higher.