Elon Musk is holding true to his commitment to sell off 10 percent of his Tesla stake, while also accruing more stock in the company. The billionaire polled his Twitter followers in November, asking whether he should offload about 17 million Tesla shares. At the time, Musk also said he would “abide by the results,” and left his fate in the hands of Twitter. 24 hours later, close to 60 percent of respondents voted yes, Musk should divest himself of the holding - at the time worth about $25 billion.
Musk’s ballot drew much criticism at the time, with many suggesting the Tesla CEO should focus more on paying taxes than publicly musing stock trades. Musk responded to the complaints, stating he doesn’t receive a cash salary or bonuses, and the only method for him to “pay taxes personally is to sell stock.” To this point, it’s important to note that Musk and Tesla came to a special arrangement in 2018, by which they agreed it he would not take an annual salary, but instead earn performance-related stock options. In short, the better Tesla does, the more shares Musk can acquire. Needless to say, Tesla has done very well in the years since, and the company leads the electric vehicle market, outpacing established carmakers such as BMW.
According to reports, Musk has just completed his latest stock trade, selling off close to 1 million shares in Tesla. When bundled in with other recent divestments, he has now unloaded approximately 15.6 million shares. At their current valuation, those shares are worth around $17 billion. So, he dump some Tesla shares... but that's not the end of the story.
Musk’s Tesla Holding Has Actually Increased
Despite Musk’s mass stock disposal, he has actually managed to increase his Tesla holdings of late. As regulatory filings show, Musk exercised an option to purchase roughly 1.6 million shares on the same day he sold off that last batch of stock. This is something space-obsessed Musk has done frequently since signing his 2018 deal, accumulating some 22.9 million shares via stock option arrangements. At the time of writing, Musk owns about 177 million shares, an increase on the 170.5 million he previously held.
Of course, with all this back-and-forth stock trading, it’s reasonable to ask what the overall benefit is for the occasional music-maker. There have been suggestions Musk owes billions in taxes, but it’s also of note that he has recently moved from California, the state with the highest income tax, to Texas, one of just a handful of states where there is no such rate. (Musk has also encouraged others to do the same.) Still, whatever his motivations for buying and selling, it remains clear the Tesla honcho certainly cares about what his Twitter fanbase thinks.
Sources: SEC, Markets Insider