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Tesla Inc. is once again worth $1 trillion, after Chief Executive Elon Musk said he is done selling shares.
Tesla
TSLA,
shares roared 7.5% higher to $1,008.87 Wednesday, pushing share prices higher than $1,000 and the electric-car company’s market capitalization — the value of all shares — past $1 trillion. After first topping that plateau in October, Tesla fell lower than that mark on Dec. 13, part of a slide that put the volatile stock into a “bear market” for the third time this year. The shares will remain in a bear market until they move 20% higher than their most recent low, which would mean a share price of $1,079.93, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
The stock’s gains followed Musk’s pronouncement in a Tuesday interview that he is done selling shares. Musk had promised to sell 10% of his stake, which at the time stood at roughly 17 million shares; filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission show that Musk has sold about 13.5 million shares for roughly $14 billion.
“I sold enough stock to get to around 10% plus the option-exercise stuff, and I tried to be extremely literal here,” Musk said in an interview with the satirical website The Babylon Bee.
From Barron’s: Elon Musk interview shows that if you thought 2021 couldn’t get weirder, you were wrong
There could be more SEC filings detailing more share sales that have not been publicly posted yet. Musk has also been exercising options as he sells shares, which could actually leave him with more shares than he had when he pledged to sell the shares after asking his followers on Twitter Inc.
TWTR,
about the possibility — the latest filing as of Wednesday’s market close in the U.S. showed Musk held 174.7 million Tesla shares.
Beyond Musk’s pronouncement, there wasn’t much positive news for Tesla on Wednesday. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or NHTSA, publicly declared it is investigating the company for reportedly installing a videogame into its cars’ touchscreens that drivers can play while actively driving the vehicle, adding to two other active investigations into Tesla’s “Autopilot” and “Full Self Driving” features.
Opinion: It’s time for Elon Musk to start telling the truth about autonomous driving
Tesla is one of only six publicly listed U.S. companies to crest a $1 trillion market cap, joining five large tech companies with much higher revenue and profit totals — Google parent company Alphabet Inc.
GOOGL,
GOOG,
Amazon.com Inc.
AMZN,
Apple Inc.
AAPL,
Microsoft Corp.
MSFT,
and Facebook parent company Meta Platforms Inc.
FB,
All but Meta currently are worth more than $1 trillion, with Apple and Microsoft topping $2 trillion.
Tesla shares have increased 42% so far this year, as the S&P 500 index
SPX,
has gained 23.8%.
