Silver Spring: Tesla Shares Closed Down About 5% on Monday After CEO Elon musk He said he would sell his 10% stake in the electric carmaker – more than $20 billion by most calculations – based on the results of a poll he conducted on Twitter over the weekend.
According to Wedbush Securities analyst Daniel Ives, Musk owns about 23% of Tesla’s stock and has about $10 billion in taxes due due stock options due next summer.
Most of Musk’s wealth is in Tesla shares, which does not pay him a cash salary.
“I only own the stock, so the only way for me personally to pay taxes is to sell the stock,” Musk tweeted.
Many on Wall Street assumed that Musk would sell close to 5% of his stake, Ives said, but even doubling that number doesn’t seem to worry him or his firm a great deal. Ives better said “turn off the band-aid now” and avoid speculation.
“Tesla remains in a pole position to take this EV adoption curve to the next level domestically and globally, with Musk & Co. leading the way,” Ives wrote in a note to clients.
Tesla has been on a roll. As of Friday, shares were up more than 40% from the previous month when the company announced record gains for the third quarter. Last week, Tesla shares hit an all-time high of $1,229.91 per share. It is the world’s most valuable car maker with a market capitalization of over $1 trillion. The stock fell 4.8% on Monday to $1,162.94. It’s still up about 65% for the year.
The sometimes abrasive and unpredictable Musk, who has a net worth of about $300 billion, said he proposed selling the stock because some Democrats are pushing for billionaires to pay taxes when the price of the shares they own goes up. Even if they don’t sell any shares. However, the word on unrealized gains, also known as the “billionaire tax”, was dropped from President Joe Biden’s budget, which is still being negotiated.
“Having a tax evasion instrument has made a lot of unrealized gains lately, so I propose to sell 10% of my Tesla stock,” he tweeted Saturday afternoon. “Do you support it?”
Musk said he would follow the results of the poll, which ended with 58% of the more than 3.5 million votes, asking him to sell the stock. He did not say when he would sell the stock.
Musk is known to stir up the markets with his sometimes flippant and non-advice tweets. Tesla shares fell more than 3% last Tuesday after Musk tweeted that a deal to sell 100,000 Teslas to Hertz had yet to be signed. Hertz said the cars were already being delivered.
Ives said about Musk twitter poll “Another bizarre soap opera that could happen in the world with only one company and one CEO Musk.”
According to Wedbush Securities analyst Daniel Ives, Musk owns about 23% of Tesla’s stock and has about $10 billion in taxes due due stock options due next summer.
Most of Musk’s wealth is in Tesla shares, which does not pay him a cash salary.
“I only own the stock, so the only way for me personally to pay taxes is to sell the stock,” Musk tweeted.
Many on Wall Street assumed that Musk would sell close to 5% of his stake, Ives said, but even doubling that number doesn’t seem to worry him or his firm a great deal. Ives better said “turn off the band-aid now” and avoid speculation.
“Tesla remains in a pole position to take this EV adoption curve to the next level domestically and globally, with Musk & Co. leading the way,” Ives wrote in a note to clients.
Tesla has been on a roll. As of Friday, shares were up more than 40% from the previous month when the company announced record gains for the third quarter. Last week, Tesla shares hit an all-time high of $1,229.91 per share. It is the world’s most valuable car maker with a market capitalization of over $1 trillion. The stock fell 4.8% on Monday to $1,162.94. It’s still up about 65% for the year.
The sometimes abrasive and unpredictable Musk, who has a net worth of about $300 billion, said he proposed selling the stock because some Democrats are pushing for billionaires to pay taxes when the price of the shares they own goes up. Even if they don’t sell any shares. However, the word on unrealized gains, also known as the “billionaire tax”, was dropped from President Joe Biden’s budget, which is still being negotiated.
“Having a tax evasion instrument has made a lot of unrealized gains lately, so I propose to sell 10% of my Tesla stock,” he tweeted Saturday afternoon. “Do you support it?”
Musk said he would follow the results of the poll, which ended with 58% of the more than 3.5 million votes, asking him to sell the stock. He did not say when he would sell the stock.
Musk is known to stir up the markets with his sometimes flippant and non-advice tweets. Tesla shares fell more than 3% last Tuesday after Musk tweeted that a deal to sell 100,000 Teslas to Hertz had yet to be signed. Hertz said the cars were already being delivered.
Ives said about Musk twitter poll “Another bizarre soap opera that could happen in the world with only one company and one CEO Musk.”
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