At an all-hands meeting last night, Elon Musk stood before Tesla employees and told them to “hang on to their TSLA stocks” as Tesla board members and top executive are dumping their shares amid a 40% crash.
Tesla has frequently held “all-hands” meetings for employees over the years, but last night, it was the first time that they were streamed publicly.
CEO Elon Musk didn’t announce anything new during the meeting. He mostly recapped Tesla’s latest milestones over the last year, thanked employees for their work, and reinstated several of his overly optimistic predictions about Tesla’s future regarding self-driving cars, robots, and stock valuation.
The CEO again claimed that he believed that Tesla would become the world’s most valuable company by a wide margin.
Musk went as far as asking employees, and indirectly the public as this was publicly live-streamed, to “hang on to their stocks.”
This comes after Tesla’s stock dropped more than 40% so far this year and Tesla is expected to have its worst quarter of the last 3 years.
The suggestion that Tesla employees and the public should hold on to their shares is a bold statement given that Tesla board members and executives have been selling recently.
We recently reported that several board members and Tesla’s own chief financial officer have been selling millions of Tesla stocks lately.
Here’s a summary of Tesla board members and executives selling their Tesla stocks over the last 3 months:
| Insider | Position | Shares Sold | Total Value (approx.) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Robyn M. Denholm | Board Chair | 224,780 | ~$76.9 million |
| Kimbal Musk | Director (Board Member) | 75,000 | ~$27.6 million |
| James R. Murdoch | Director (Board Member) | 54,776 | ~$13.2 million |
| Vaibhav Taneja | Chief Financial Officer | ~13,500 | ~$4.5 million |
| Kathleen Wilson-Thompson | Director (Board Member) | 100,000 | ~$41.2 million |
Electrek’s Take
I wonder if Elon has given them the same speech about holding on to their shares and that Tesla would soon be the most valuable company in the world?
If they believed him, they would buy Tesla stocks, not sell them.
Not a single Tesla insider who requires SEC reporting to buy or sell Tesla stocks has purchased it in the last few years.
None.
Top comment by Philip234
By any reasonable measure, TSLA is overvalued by 5x - 10x depending on your view. It is running a P/E of 120 even after its recent sell-off and that was at last year's (very good compared to this quarter) earnings. I expect that the real PE on the current quarter is 250 or so. A $20 - $40 trading range would be an exceptionally strong vote of confidence in its future and would more than account for any likely earnings growth associated with automated vehicles and robots.
To me, it looks like Elon is getting desperate here. He knows that Tesla is about to have a terrible quarter. April is likely going to be tough for Tesla’s stock with the delivery report in the first week and the earnings later in the month.
He wanted to boost the stock before those events happened in order to limit the damages.
It’s likely going to work for a bit. He exposed his new fans on the right to his now well-known speech about Tesla becoming the most valuable company in the world through robotaxis and humanoid robots. Some of those new fans might decide to buy on this recommendation.
However, they are likely to get burned within weeks. This has become the new normal with this administration pumping cryptos, DJT, etc.
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