Photo: Tesla Motors
The automotive industry needed someone like Elon Musk, a face that’s more important than a brand - something you’ll never see with companies such as Toyota, Volkswagen or GM, to name but a few.
Him, however, he’s a character. Love him, hate him or simply ignore him, he’s still the man who believed in his idea right from the start and didn’t stop at anything until he saw it grow into a solid company that’s making a lot of people happy (while also generating a fair share of Internet trolls and haters).
Just yesterday, his confidence in the success of Tesla Motors has been further underlined by his decision to buy an extra batch of the company’s shares. The CEO exercised 532,000 of his options in the company, which were worth in excess of $101 million at yesterday’s closing price of $191,2 per share. That’s a lot of money.
Yes, only Elon Musk didn’t pay nearly as much as that. In fact, he paid about thirty times less, as due to a special clause he was able to conduct the transaction at the price per share registered in 2009, before the company went public. That’s every Wall Street broker’s dream: making thirty times the money overnight.
But it wasn’t the immediate cash that Elon Musk was after. No, this move was simply a means of showing other interested parties that buying Tesla Motors shares is a sound investment. Compared to the 28,371,342 shares he held prior to this latest transaction, the 532,000 new ones are almost irrelevant. They increase Elon Musk’s ownership of Tesla Motors by less than one percent (0.4%, to be more precise) and are definitely not newsworthy.
That didn’t stop Tesla’s PR machine from trying to make big news out of this, which further enhances the idea that this is just a scheme meant to show the CEO’s confidence in the success of his company right before the release of a very important new model.
The long-awaited affordable Tesla is scheduled to be launched in March, and this Model 3 could mark a very important turning point in the company’s history: it could be the vehicle that turns Tesla into a true mass-producing manufacturer. What are we talking about? It’s not “could”, it’s “should.”
Just yesterday, his confidence in the success of Tesla Motors has been further underlined by his decision to buy an extra batch of the company’s shares. The CEO exercised 532,000 of his options in the company, which were worth in excess of $101 million at yesterday’s closing price of $191,2 per share. That’s a lot of money.
Yes, only Elon Musk didn’t pay nearly as much as that. In fact, he paid about thirty times less, as due to a special clause he was able to conduct the transaction at the price per share registered in 2009, before the company went public. That’s every Wall Street broker’s dream: making thirty times the money overnight.
But it wasn’t the immediate cash that Elon Musk was after. No, this move was simply a means of showing other interested parties that buying Tesla Motors shares is a sound investment. Compared to the 28,371,342 shares he held prior to this latest transaction, the 532,000 new ones are almost irrelevant. They increase Elon Musk’s ownership of Tesla Motors by less than one percent (0.4%, to be more precise) and are definitely not newsworthy.
That didn’t stop Tesla’s PR machine from trying to make big news out of this, which further enhances the idea that this is just a scheme meant to show the CEO’s confidence in the success of his company right before the release of a very important new model.
The long-awaited affordable Tesla is scheduled to be launched in March, and this Model 3 could mark a very important turning point in the company’s history: it could be the vehicle that turns Tesla into a true mass-producing manufacturer. What are we talking about? It’s not “could”, it’s “should.”
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