With Tesla ending the Q3 on a strong financial footing and TSLA stock currently feeling pressure from Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s “Twitter overhang,” retail shareholders have banded together to request the automaker to initiate a share buyback, as per Teslarati.
As of writing, the shareholders’ petition has collected over 3,600 signatures.
High-profile Tesla bulls called on Musk
Some high-profile Tesla bulls have called on Elon Musk to initiate a buyback of Tesla stock. These include Leo KoGuan, believed to be the third largest TSLA shareholder, and Gary Black, a Wall Street veteran and the Managing Partner of The Future Fund LLC, whose largest holding is TSLA.
Musk noted during the Q3 earnings call that Tesla is open to initiating a share buyback. According to the billionaire, almost everyone on Tesla’s board has received questions about the topic. He also said a share buyback is possible, even in the downside scenario next year.
“We’ve debated the buyback idea extensively at the board level. The board generally thinks that it makes sense to do a buyback. But we want to work through the right process to do a buyback, but it’s certainly possible for us to do a buyback on the order of $5 billion to $10 billion.” said Musk.
“Even in the downside scenario next year, even if next year is — was a very difficult year, we still have the ability to do a $5 billion to $10 billion buyback,”
A retail Tesla shareholder, Alexandra Merz, noted in the TSLA stockholders’ Change.org petition the time is okay for the company to carry out a share buyback now or hopefully in this year’s remaining weeks.
In addition, the Tesla shareholder listed some reasons for this, like the company benefiting from an unvalued TSLA stock price. The Texas-based carmaker could also present confidence in its future results while evading a 1% tax on share buybacks that will become applicable on January 1 next year.
Petition signups on Change.org
The Tesla shareholders’ petition has acquired significant ground, with new signups recorded on Change.org.
So far, 3,658 people have signed up in the past three days. For Musk’s part, he previously noted that a share buyback was completely up to Tesla’s board earlier this month.
Hopefully, the company’s board will listen to the voice of its retail shareholders this time, considering their growing voice.
