Tesla stocks plunge 5% in pre-market trading Monday after CEO, Elon Musk asked his Twitter followers to vote if he should sell 10% of his stocks in the electric vehicle company.
Tesla’s stock was down 5.5% to $1,155 at 5 a.m. ET Monday, a significant drop from Friday’s close of $1,222.09 on the New York Stock Exchange.
The share price had made a little comeback in premarket trading at the time of writing the story, but it was still down -3.69%.
What happened
The drop in Tesla stocks came after Musk asked his Twitter followers to determine the future of his Tesla holdings.
In a Twitter poll launched Saturday, Elon said: “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?”
He gave his followers the option to vote “Yes” or “No” and promised to abide by the results of the poll, whichever way it went.
The majority which amounted to 3,519,252 people responded, and 57.9% of them voted for “Yes”.
Hence, this action has sparked the recent activity surrounding Tesla stocks in premarket trading.
However, regardless of the results of the Twitter poll, Musk would have likely sold millions of shares this quarter, due to the tax bill of more than $15 billion.
His options expire in August 2022 but in order to exercise them, he has to pay the income tax on the gain.
What you should know
Musk is the world’s richest person, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index, ahead of Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos and French retail magnate, Bernard Arnault. Musk’s net worth is estimated to be around $338 billion, according to the index.
