Trusting Elon Musk is risky.
The richest man in the world agreed to buy Twitter for about 44,000 million dollars (about 43,000 million euros) and three months later he backed down.
He sold $8.5 billion worth of Tesla stock to pay for the deal and said he had no further sales planned.
But three months later, although there is no longer an operation, he has surprised the market by announcing the sale of shares worth another 6,900 million dollars.
"In the (hopefully unlikely) event that Twitter forces this deal to close *and* some equity partners don't follow through, it's important to avoid an emergency sale of Tesla stock," he tweeted in response to an email. social network user.
The tycoon has communicated the operations to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (the SEC, for its acronym in English, the supervisory body of the markets based in Washington. Elon Musk has registered six different communications on Tuesday night with dozens of sales operations carried out between last Friday and this Tuesday.
In total, Musk has divested some 7.9 million shares valued at about $6.9 billion.
Following those deals, Musk still owns 155 million shares of the electric car maker valued at more than $130 billion.
Tesla's price has suffered from the selling pressure of its founder and in those three sessions the price has fallen by 8.8%, to $850 per title.
So far this year, Tesla shares are down 29%.
Musk's previous sales of Tesla shares occurred in late April.
The billionaire revealed that in the three days after the agreement to buy the social network, he sold shares of the car manufacturer Tesla for an amount of about 8,500 million dollars.
After communicating the first part of those sales, for about 4,000 million, Musk tweeted: "No more sales of Tesla shares planned after today", although without clarifying that he still had to communicate additional sales.
In any case, since then, Musk had not sold more shares, although the truth is that it was not a formal commitment or with a time horizon.
The tycoon can argue that today's sales were not planned at the time.
awaiting trial
Since those 8,500 million have not finally been allocated to the operation, Musk accumulated enormous liquidity, which now increases even more.
With those funds in his pocket, the tycoon can be prepared in case he loses his case about buying the social network.
Twitter has sued Musk demanding that he abide by the agreement after he tore it up alleging the company had misled the market by lying about the percentage of fake user accounts it has.
The Wilmington (Delaware) judge in charge of the case has set the trial sessions between October 17 and 21.
Previously, Twitter has called its shareholders to ratify the sale agreement on September 13, although the operation is up in the air.
Musk wanted to delay the process, but the judge has preferred to speed it up, given the uncertainty for investors not knowing if the operation will take place.
After the Twitter trial, Musk has another lawsuit, also in Delaware, for the multimillion-dollar bonus in Tesla shares that he received as compensation and that has been questioned by a shareholder.
Musk's fortune stands at about $250 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
During the last year he has sold more than 30,000 million shares of Tesla, part of them to meet the tax obligations of the compensation he receives in shares of the company.
