Elon Musk’s infamous $420 take Tesla private tweet was actually a blessing in disguise, in 2018 this tweet alone cost him and Tesla $20 million each and the Chairmanship of the company as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission took notice of Elon Musk not being able to fulfill the promise as the investors backed from the deal.
Not many people had an idea what Elon Musk was referring to when he responded to a tweet with the words “Worth it” after the SEC settlement — some speculated that he meant the 1 million+ followers that he gained as a result of the media hype during this case but after almost two years it is as clear as daylight what he foresaw in the future.
Tyler Hilliard, a Tesla fan cracked the code and posted a calculation on how much profit Elon Musk had made from this seemingly unfortunate situation, another Musk masterstroke.
Actually, when SEC fined both Tesla and Elon Musk $20M each, Elon Musk wanted to pay the fine for Tesla personally but SEC did not allow this and Tesla had to pay its own share of the damages
The $20M Elon actually wanted to pay as the fine for his company and wasn’t allowed to do so, he instead invested all of this money back into Tesla for which he was able to acquire around 71,000 TSLA shares at a valuation of $282 each.
However, the above calculation by Tyler is from 2nd July when TSLA price was $1,209 which is not the case today, as of the time of this writing a TSLA has crossed the price point of $1,480 and is not showing any signs of a slowdown.
So a rough estimate would be $1480 x 71000 = ~$105 million — if we minus the $20M personal fine and the $20M he invested in Tesla shares, he has just made a whopping $65M+ as a result of his investment — not a bad deal at all.
As soon as Tesla announces the Q2, 2020 financial results with an expected profit, there are strong chances of the Silicon Valley-based automaker to join the S&P 500 index, things would be looking too cool for the Tesla CEO, pretty amazing times ahead.
That’s why he shamed the Tesla short-sellers by selling a red satin Tesla Short Shorts that sold out in minutes and now symbolizes the greatest Tesla short burn in history.
Full Discolosure: I don’t own any Tesla (TSLA) shares and am not willing to invest in the next 72 hours.
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