(Bloomberg/Craig Trudell, Esha Dey and Kara Carlson) — Elon Musk responded to an unprecedented pay proposal from Tesla Inc.’s board by buying about $1 billion worth of shares, sending the carmaker’s stock soaring into positive territory for the year.
The billionaire bought the shares indirectly through a revocable trust on Sept. 12, according to a regulatory filing released Monday. The purchase coincided with Tesla Chair Robyn Denholm speaking with reporters about the merits of awarding Musk around $1 trillion worth of stock if the company achieves a series of ambitious market value and performance milestones.
Tesla’s shares jumped 6.4% at 11:44 a.m. in New York, touching their highest price since Jan. 22. The stock is now up about 4% on a year-to-date basis, having recovered from a 45% decline as of early April.
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Musk, 54, last bought Tesla stock in the open market in February 2020, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The chief executive officer offloaded more than $20 billion of the company’s shares in 2022, the year he acquired Twitter.
The purchase amounts to a show of confidence in Tesla’s prospects after a challenging first half of the year in which vehicle sales slumped 13% worldwide. While Musk has talked up Tesla’s pursuit of robotaxis and humanoid robots, he’s also cautioned that the company could be in for “a few rough quarters” after the US phases out electric-car purchase incentives at the end of this month.
It’s a bullish indicator for those who believe Tesla’s Optimus robots can be deployed in large numbers fairly soon, said Dmitry Shlyapnikov, an analyst at Horizon Investments who works with portfolio managers.
“If you are a little more skeptical on Tesla’s robotics endeavors, this is simply Elon buying shares to indicate his commitment to the company so that the recently proposed pay package gets approved,” he said.
Tesla’s car business has continued to show signs of strain, with market researcher Cox Automotive estimating that its share of the US electric vehicle market slipped below 40% in August. Registrations also kept slumping last month in major markets across Europe, and vehicle shipments from the company’s Shanghai factory dropped in both July and August.
Meanwhile, Tesla’s price-to-earnings ratio — a metric that investors use to gauge how expensive a stock is — has soared as profit expectations sank. Tesla shares currently trade at about 186 times forward 12-month earnings, compared to the S&P 500’s average of 23 times. Even a group of the seven biggest US technology stocks — which include Tesla — trade at an average of 30 times.
“There’s an increasing disconnect between the stock price and what we see as the earnings estimate trajectory,” said CFRA analyst Garrett Nelson. “A lot of investors are really taking a long-term view of the story and sort of continuing to give the company a pass on on some pretty major near-term headwinds.”
Denholm, who’s been chair of Tesla’s board since 2018, called Musk a “generational leader” in a Sept. 12 interview with Bloomberg Television. She downplayed concerns that Musk’s political activity has hurt the company’s performance and suggested he has wide latitude in this regard going forward.
“What he does from a personal perspective, in terms of his political motivations, is up to him,” Denholm said. “We’re in a democracy, so everybody gets to voice their points of view.”
The following day, Musk made a remote appearance at a London march organized by the far-right agitator known as Tommy Robinson. The billionaire predicted that “violence is coming” to the UK and told rallygoers: “You either fight back, or you die.”
A spokesman for UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer called Musk’s language inflammatory and dangerous.
Musk is the world’s richest person with a net worth of about $419 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
–With assistance from Ben Stupples.
(Updates shares, adds analyst commentary starting in the third paragraph.)
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