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November 9, 2021: -On Saturday, Elon Musk asked his 62.5 million Twitter followers to determine the future of a chunk of his Tesla holdings.
Although Twitter polls are informal, Musk said he would likely sell “a huge block” of his options in the fourth quarter.
In September, it an appearance at the Code Conference, Musk said when his stock options expire at Tesla, his marginal tax rate will be more than 50% and that he was planning to sell soon.
“I have a bunch of options that are expiring early coming year; a huge block of options selling in Q4 because I have to, or they’ll expire,” Musk said at the conference.
Different current and former Tesla board members, including Robyn Denholm, Kimbal Musk, Ira Ehrenpreis, and Antonio Gracias, have sold hundreds of millions of dollars worth of their Tesla shares since October 28 as their stock rallied.
Shares are climbing after a record third quarter for Tesla and an announcement from rental car company Hertz that it was ordering 100,000 Tesla vehicles for its fleet. Musk is waiting for a week after Hertz made its announcement to make it clear that Tesla had not signed a contract with the rental car company yet. Before making that statement, he taunted investors shorting shares of Tesla on Twitter, writing: “Tesla Hertz shorts.”
Since the Hertz announcement, Tesla shares have increased by nearly 34%, and so has Elon Musk’s net worth.
According to InsiderScore Director of Research Ben Silverman, Tesla had just more than 1 billion shares outstanding in late October. If Musk exercised his options, the number of shares outstanding would increase by just over 2%, InsiderScore calculated. Silverman predicts the effect on shareholders will be minimal, partly because the sales won’t be a surprise.
“Musk will likely continue to be vocal about what he’s doing exercising the options because they’re close to expiration, which selling stock because of the enormous tax bill, and because of the liquidity of Tesla shares,” he said.
Suggesting that he was responding to criticism that he’s avoided paying his fair share of taxes instead of managing his options holdings, the Tesla CEO asked users on Saturday to decide whether he should hold or sell 10% of his stock.
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