Elon Musk says he won’t sell any more Tesla stock for two years
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Mr Elon Musk has previously made promises about not selling Tesla stock before subsequently selling it.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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San Francisco – Tesla chief executive Elon Musk said on Thursday he will not sell any more Tesla stock for about two years.
While speaking in a Twitter Spaces audio chat, Mr Musk said he foresees the economy will be in a “serious recession” in 2023 and consumer demand will be lower.
His comments came after a Tesla stock sell-off deepened on Thursday over worries about softening demand for electric cars and Mr Musk’s distraction with Twitter and his stock sales.
“I won’t sell stock until, I don’t know, probably two years from now. Definitely not next year under any circumstances and probably not the year thereafter,” he said.
Shares of Tesla rose 3 per cent to US$129.23 in after-hours trading on Thursday, following an 8.9 per cent drop during regular trading hours.
Mr Musk has previously made promises about not selling Tesla stock before subsequently selling it. Last week, he disclosed another US$3.6 billion (S$4.9 billion) in stock sales,
“I needed to sell some stock to make sure, like, there’s powder dry... to account for a worst-case scenario,” the billionaire said.
He said Tesla’s board is open to share buyback, but that will depend on the scale of a recession.
On Thursday, Tesla shares plunged 9 per cent, after Tesla started to offer deep, US$7,500 discounts to US consumers, fuelling investor concerns about softening demand as the economy slows.
“I think there is going to be some macro drama that’s higher than people currently think,” Mr Musk said, adding that homes and cars will get “disproportionately impacted” by economic conditions.
He also said that Tesla is close to picking the location of its new gigafactory. Tesla could announce the construction of a gigafactory in the northern Mexican state of Nuevo Leon as soon as Friday, with an initial investment of between US$800 million and US$1 billion, Mexican newspaper Reforma reported on Monday.
Asked whether he would bring in someone such as venture capitalist David Sacks to run Twitter to allow him to focus on Tesla, Mr Musk dodged the question and said Twitter was a relatively simple business.
“(Twitter) is maybe 10 per cent of the complexity of Tesla,” he said.
Mr Musk has increasingly used Twitter’s live audio platform to weigh in on his product and strategic decisions at the social media company he took private in October in a US$44 billion deal.
