Making an Impact Through Social Media Announcements
Recently, the owner of Tesla and SpaceX, Elon Musk, asked his followers on Twitter whether he should sell 10% of his stock in Tesla, and the majority of them responded with “yes”. What followed the results of that tweet was over a 10% drop in the value of the stock of Tesla during the premarket trading period.
On Twitter, Musk talked about how many people made a connection between unrealized gains, such as stocks in companies, and tax avoidance, which is why he posed the question to his followers on the platform. He created a poll on Twitter and asked whether they agree that he should sell 10% of the stock. He followed up the question with a statement saying that he would be abiding by the results of the Twitter poll, no matter what.
Nearly 60% of the people that responded in the poll, out of over 3,5 million voters, said that he should sell the stock, however, since the results have come in Musk hasn’t made any public responses. According to The Wall Street Journal, if Musk sold 10% of his stock in Tesla, he’d get about $21 billion, based on that week’s Friday closing price. However, depending on how the market continues to fluctuate until he finally makes the decision and sells, that number can change.
The drop in the value of the stock of the company is on pace to become the largest of the year for that stock in particular, although the shares have increased by nearly 50% in the last year. Additionally, in the last few weeks, some of the current and former board members of Tesla also decided to sell hundreds of millions of dollars worth of their own shares in Tesla, including Musk’s own brother, Kimbal Musk, chairwoman Robyn Denholm, and many others.
However, according to experts, Musk received a notable options package back in 2012, as part of his CEO performance plan. Since he’s not taking a salary or a cash bonus, all of his wealth actually comes from the gains and awards from the stocks of Tesla’s share price. The award he received back in 2012 is set to expire next year and was worth nearly 23 million dollars in shares. Some experts believe that that’s the real reason he’s selling 10% of his stock.
Nevertheless, things that Elon Musk says online have an impact on the real world, and powerful people like him should take note of that and be careful with their words. Musk has had a big impact on various stock prices and trends in the last year alone, and only through using his Twitter account. Additionally, he and his electric vehicle company Tesla have also been facing public backlash recently due to other customer-facing issues, which he’s made short responses for. The public hasn’t been completely satisfied by these responses, either.
