Last weekend, Elon Musk asked his Twitter followers to help him determine what to do with 10 percent of his Tesla stock. The poll has been concluded and it seems that the billionaire will be selling 10 percent of his Tesla holding soon.
Although Twitter polls are informal and Elon Musk is yet to make an official statement about selling his stock after the poll, a tweet he shared last weekend mentioned that he was going to stick to the results of the poll; his decision to sell or not will be based strictly on the poll’s result. “I will abide by the results of this poll, whichever way it goes”, the tweet said.
Months ago at a Code Conference that was held in September, Elon Musk while stating his interest to sell his stock, announced that when his stock options expire at Tesla, his marginal tax rate would be more than 50 percent. “I have a bunch of options that are expiring early next year, so a huge block of options will sell in Q4 – because I have to or they’ll expire”, he said.
Following this, on Saturday the billionaire asked his more than 62 million Twitter followers to decide what to do with a chunk of his Tesla holdings. Out of his 62.5 million followers, 3,519,252 participated in the poll. While 42 percent voted ‘No’, 58 percent voted for ‘Yes’. The Twitter poll came with caption “Much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10 percent of my Tesla stock”.
Current and former board members of Tesla such as Kimbal Musk, Ira Ehrenpreis, etc., have since sold off their Tesla shares last month as the company’s stock rallied.
Tesla had an impressive third quarter. The electric vehicle company reported earnings that surpassed the expectations of analysts. The electric vehicle company also announced a new market capitalization of $1 trillion following rental company Hertz’s order of 100,000 Tesla vehicles for its fleet. Tesla shares have soared by about 34 percent since the Hertz announcement. The company’s CEO Elon Musk’s net worth has also increased alongside Tesla’s shares. Of his considerable holdings, Elon Musk has options for 22,862,050 shares at $6.24 due to expire on the 13th of August, 2022.
The public awaits an official statement from Elon Musk who tweeted last weekend that “…I do not take a cash salary or bonus from anywhere. I only have stock, thus the only way for me to pay taxes personally is to sell stock”.
Ibhadojemu Lucky Emmanuel is a graduate of Education and Economics from the University of Benin. He has a passion for tech and business and has been writing professionally for over a period of five years. He's written across various topics and segments and knew tech-business was it when he first stumbled on it. He has a great passion for music and arts, and wants to visit as many countries as he can someday.
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