Musk made a series of transactions last week, buying about 2.57 million shares of Tesla stock at $371 to $396 per share, with a total value of about $1 billion, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission filings disclosed on Monday. This is the first time that he has made a large-scale increase in the open market since he purchased the shares for about $10 million in February 2020.
The market responded quickly and positively to this. After the document was disclosed, Tesla’s stock price soared more than 8% in pre-market trading on Monday, hitting the $428 level, driving the company’s market value to surge by about $100 billion. Some analysts pointed out that this round of rise helped the stock achieve a technical breakthrough.
The background of this increase is that Tesla’s board of directors is trying hard to defend Musk. In an interview with the media, Tesla Chairman Robyn Denholm called Musk a “one-time leader” and emphasized that retaining him is “the best way to optimize Tesla’s future.”
Swordsmanship targets 20% of the shares and artificial intelligence ambitions
Regulatory documents show that Musk’s acquisition occurred last Friday and was completed through a series of transactions. This nearly $1 billion investment is his biggest personal move in the open market in recent years, significantly different from his symbolic purchase of about $10 million in 2020.
This large-scale insider purchase was interpreted by investors as optimistic about the company’s prospects, which directly ignited market enthusiasm. Before Monday’s trading session, Tesla’s stock price rose nearly 8%, approaching its historical high.
After the opening of the US stock market, Tesla continued to rise. At the beginning of the session, the stock price rose by about 7.5%, and finally closed up nearly 3.6%, at US$410.04, rising for five consecutive trading days, setting a new closing high since January 23.
By the close of Monday, Tesla’s stock price had smoothed its decline since the beginning of this year, up about 1.5% from the end of last year, and rebounded nearly 85% from the closing low of this year on April 8.
According to some market observers, driven by this increase in holdings, Tesla’s stock price broke through the technical pattern of the “upward triangle”.
Musk has not concealed his strategic intention to increase his stake. He has long publicly stated that he hopes to hold at least 20% of Tesla to ensure that he can effectively resist radical investors or potential acquisition threats at a critical period of the company’s transformation to the field of artificial intelligence and robotics.
This increase in holdings is an important step for him to achieve this goal. Just last month, Tesla’s board of directors awarded Musk a shareholding, increasing its stake from 13% to 16%.
The compensation plan deeply binds Musk’s salary to the company’s performance. The core is no longer a car, but a profit leap through large-scale promotion of robotaxi network and Optimus humanoid robots. Whether the plan will be successful will depend on Tesla’s commercialization capabilities in the field of robots and whether investors are willing to continue to pay for its future potential.
