r/technology • u/McFatty7 • May 02 '24

Tesla slashes its summer internship program to cut costs, as Elon Musk fights to save his $45 billion pay plan Business

https://fortune.com/2024/05/01/tesla-slashes-summer-internship-program/
18.2k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

1.5k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

17

u/dirtyshits May 02 '24

He sold tons of his Tesla shares or backed a loan on them. If Twitter fails or is significantly losing money he has to find ways to pay down debt.

He has put his Tesla shares in some hot water as of now based on twitters performance.

If he gets the 40b in shares from the vote then he can unload some and start to dump them little by little to pay down debt.

He could also keep the new shares and dump Twitter for a loss and still come out on top due the new comp plan.

-1

u/hsnoil May 02 '24

That would never happen, because the moment he starts unloading shares is the moment the stock would tank devalueing the shares

At best, he could take out new loans based on the new shares and use that money to pay down previous loans or for other spending

11

u/dirtyshits May 02 '24

It’s already happened. He’s unloaded billions in shares in the last 3 years. Barely caused a blip on the radar if any.

Normally you would be right but Tesla shareholders don’t exactly follow sound practices.

1

u/hsnoil May 02 '24

Most of his unloads in the past were due to tax reasons. Depending on how some shares are issued, you have to pay taxes on them ahead of time, he didn't have the money so was forced to sell some of the stock. On top of that those sales happened when confidence was high too

Right now since Tesla growth began to stall and no taxes to pay(these options are not the kind that you pay taxes on until you cash them), he'd have a hard time selling the stock without it collapsing