Tesla is awarding CEO Elon Musk 96 million shares of restricted stock valued at approximately $29 billion, just six months after a judge ordered the company to revoke his massive pay package.
The electric vehicle maker said in a regulatory filing on Monday that Musk must first pay Tesla $23.34 per share of restricted stock that vests, which is equal to the exercise price per share of the 2018 pay package that was awarded to the company’s CEO.
I think that they are afraid that his cult following is all they have left. Tesla’s record of late is very poor. The self driving software, something they have been pushing as a major feature, is buggy as hell and they’ve now been found liable for at least one death because of it. Plus, their manufacturing and QC is very low from everything I’ve seen about their cybertrucks. Anyone remember when that guy blew up himself and his cybertruck in Vegas? People literally didn’t know at first if it was an attack or if it just blew up because that’s what Teslas do.
Quarterly profits dropped by more than two thirds? That is a huge hit and the shareholders must be screaming. On the one hand, between his DOGE bullshit and his general incompetence as a leader, I have to think that Musk is the cause of nearly all of this. On the other hand, it’s very probably his cult following that is fueling the sales that they still have.
If Musk were to be fired or quit Tesla, I could see his cult ditching all their EVs and going back to rolling coal in their gas powered cars. And I don’t think regular EV shoppers would forget about all the flaws in Teslas and start buying them just because Musk was out. Tesla sales would probably tank even further. That’s my guess as to why they are so desperate to keep him around.
So he has to pay them for the stock first. The article doesn’t say how many millions of shares, but at that price Tesla is getting a cash infusion of at least $50 million dollars, possibly much more, and they get to keep their figurehead and his cult followers for a while longer. This might be the best move they can manage considering the damage he’s done to the brand.
EU EV sales are falling, Tesla used to dominate sales, now they don’t even make it to top 5 in europe.
The company will not survive if Musk doesn’t leave.
It may not survive if he does leave, either. The damage is done. Who’s going to buy Tesla now?
Plenty of people would in a heartbeat if Elon Musk was publicly and thoroughly excommunicated from the power structure of the company. They would have to rebuild the brand but heres the thing people hate Elon Musk not Tesla.
Personally, I can’t help but see them as junkers these days. You could be right, of course, but I wouldn’t buy one. Not for a very long time after Musk was gone and no longer screwing everything up, anyway.
Is the charger infrastructure maybe more valuable to a potential buyer than the cars at this point?
Tesla will go bankrupt either way and will be bought up for pennies by competitors