Elon Musk’s 2021 share sales, alongside a $5 billion donation to charity, have still left the billionaire CEO with an even larger stake in the world’s most-valuable carmaker.
Updated at 7:38 am EST
Tesla (TSLA) – Get Tesla Inc Report shares extended gains Tuesday following the release of Securities and Exchange Commission filings that show founder and CEO Elon Musk now controls more than a fifth of the world’s most valuable carmaker.
Musk held a passive 21.2% stake in Tesla as of December 31, according to SEC ’13-D’ filings published Tuesday, a figure that represents around 231,715 shares and is a 2% increase from a similar filing at the end of 2020.
SEC filings also show that Musk also donated just over 5 million shares to an unnamed charity between November 19 and November 29 last year, around the same time he was unloading around $16.4 billion in shares of the group as part of a pre-arranged plan to convert earlier share options and meet U.S. tax liabilities.
However, he’s also exercised options to buy around 18 million shares — most of which were granted a strike price of $6.24 each — that have increased his control over the world’s most valuable carmaker, making him the world’s richest man, with the Bloomberg Billionaires Index pegging his personal fortune at around $245 billion.
Russia Pullback, Intel, Peloton, Elon Musk and Warren Buffett – Five Things You Must Know
Tesla shares were marked 3.5% higher in pre-market trading to indicate an opening bell price of $906.05 each, a move that would still leave the stock some 26.2% south of its all-time closing high of $1,229.91 on November 4.
Musk’s late-year stock sales, as well as a January warning that supply-chain disruptions have held back production capacity and will impact that pace of near-term output, have pressured Tesla shares over the past three months, even as the group reported record 2021 sales and surging fourth quarter profits.
Tesla said a continuation of global supply chain, transportation, labor and other manufacturing challenges would limit its ability to “run our factories at full capacity,” although it noted that its original Freemont facility achieved a record production rate.
Musk said annual sales would still grow 50% from 2021 levels — suggesting a full-year tally of around $75 billion — even if only the Freemont and Shanghai gigafactories are running at full speed.
Still, the warning took some of the gloss from a record fourth quarter, which saw revenues rise 65% from last year to an-all time high of $17.72 billion while gross automotive margins were pegged at a better-than-expected 29.2%.
