Tesla Stock Falls After Elon Musk’s Twitter Poll On Shares Sale

Tesla’s stock price fell on Monday after the chief executive Elon Musk proposed a 10 percent sale of his holdings in the electric vehicle maker on Twitter.

Gatekeepers News reports that, over the weekend, Musk ran a Twitter poll asking: “Much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10% of my Tesla stock. Do you support this?”

The poll which began on Saturday garnered over 3.5 million votes and about 57.9 percent voted in favour of Musk selling a 10 percent chunk of his holdings, which would be worth around $21 billion. Musk, according to Bloomberg, holds around Tesla 170.5 million shares.

Musk said on Twitter he would “abide by the results of this poll, whichever way it goes” and said after it closed he was “prepared to accept either outcome”.

On Monday morning, shares in the electric car maker fell in Germany and are likely to come under pressure when trading opens in New York later today. Telsa was down 7.8% in Frankfurt and sunk 7% in the pre-market in New York.

Chief market analyst at CMC Markets, Michael Hewson said: “Early indications suggest that the shares could fall sharply on the open, however, it is not as if Musk will now go and dump them on the open market. He could well drip-feed them into the market over time.

“The fact that he’s got buy-in from his fans on social media will also dilute the impact of the sale and while we may see some early weakness, the shares are due to a bit of a pullback anyway.”

Tesla stock remains near all-time highs and is up almost 40% so far this year, recently passing the $1 trillion mark.

Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell, said: “What does it mean for Tesla? Nothing. It has no impact upon the company’s strategy, business model or competitive position, or its balance sheet, or supply/demand dynamics within its market – the factors which investors will assess when deciding whether to invest in the company or not.

“The only thing that has changed is the shares are 7% cheaper than they were on Friday and thus – if you believe in the investment case – 7% more attractively valued.”

Gatekeepers News reports that Musk has a history of moving Tesla’s share price with tweets. In 201, he was censured by regulators after tweeting that he had secured funding to take Tesla private at $420 a share. No bid materialised. He was subsequently asked to give supervisors oversight of his Tweets before he posted them.