Tesla shareholders vote to reinstate Elon Musk’s $56 billion pay package

Tesla
shareholders
on
Thursday
voted
to
ratify
CEO

Elon
Musk’s
mammoth
2018
pay
plan,
five
months
after
a
judge
in
Delaware
ordered
the
company
to
rescind
the
package,
finding
it
had
been
improperly
granted
by
the
board.

At
Tesla’s
annual
meeting
in
Austin,
Texas,
the
vote
in
support
of
the
compensation
plan,
doesn’t
override
the
court’s
ruling,
but
provides
a
public
relations
victory
for
Musk
and
could
help
his
effort
to
sway
a
court
to
give
him
his
performance
options
in
the
future.

Taking
the
stage
after
the
preliminary
results
were
announced,
Musk
said,
“I
just
want
to
start
off
by
saying
hot
d—!
I
love
you
guys.”

Watch
Elon
Musk
speak
at
the
Tesla
shareholder
meeting
now

The
compensation
package
was
previously
worth
as
much
as
$56
billion
in
Tesla
stock.
In
January,
a
Delaware
court
called
the
pay
“unfathomable.”
Judge
Kathaleen
McCormick
found
that
Tesla’s
board
members
lacked
independence
from
Musk,
failed
to
properly
negotiate
at
arm’s
length
with
the
CEO
and
didn’t
to
give
shareholders
the
full
picture
before
asking
them
to
vote
on
his
pay
plan.

Tesla
shares
rose
2.9%
in
regular
trading
on
Thursday
to
close
at
$182.47
after
Musk
posted
on
X
that
the
proposal
was
set
to
be
approved.
The
stock
is
still
down
27%
for
the
year,
as
Tesla
reckons
with
declining
sales
tied
to
an
aging
lineup
of
electric
vehicles
and
increased
competition
in
China.

The
annual
meeting
featured
final
votes
on
a
dozen
proxy
proposals,
including
an
effort
by
Musk
to
move
Tesla’s
site
of
incorporation
out
of
Delaware,
where
most
large
publicly
traded
companies
are
incorporated,
and
into
Texas,
home
to
the
automaker’s
largest
U.S.
factory.
Shareholders
voted
in
favor
of
the
move.

At
the
last
shareholder
meeting,
in

May
2023,
Musk
predicted
the
economy
would
pick
up
after
12
months,
said
that
Tesla
would
deliver
production
Cybertrucks
in
late
2023,
and
informed
investors
that
Tesla
would
“try
out
a
little
advertising”
and
see
how
it
goes.

Recent

inflation
and
jobs
numbers
point
to
some
improvement.
Tesla
held
a
Cybertruck
deliveries
event
in
late
2023,
and
has
been
advertising
over
the
past
year,
including
on
X,
the
social
media
company
formerly
known
as
Twitter
that
Musk
acquired
for
$44
billion
in
late
2022.

However,
during
last
year’s
meeting,
Musk
promised
shareholders
he
would
spend
less
time
on
the
app
going
forward,
calling
the
business
a
“short-term
distraction.”

He’s
still
spending
plenty
of
time
on
other
things.
Musk
is
CEO
of
SpaceX
and
brain
computer
interface
company
Neuralink.
Last
year
he
also
started
a
new
company
called
xAI,
which
has
raised
billions
of
dollars
to
developing
large
language
models
and
an
AI
chatbot
called
Grok
that
uses
data
and
data
center
capacity
from
X.

An
exuberant
Musk,
calling
himself
“pathologically
optimistic,”
promised
Tesla
shareholders
at
the
meeting
that
the
company
is
making
such
great
progress
on
developing
“vehicle
autonomy,”
or
systems
to
turn
existing
Tesla
cars
into
self-driving
vehicles,
that
he
believes
they
can
“10x
the
value
of
the
company.”

While
Musk
has
been
promising
that
level
of
autonomous
technology
since
2016,
it’s
yet
to
deliver.
Meanwhile,
competitors
including
Pony.ai,
Didi
and
Waymo
have
developed
robotaxis
and
already
operate
commercial
services.

Musk
described
the
company’s
ambition
to
create
a
ridehailing
network
populated
with
Tesla
vehicles
equipped
with
self-driving
systems,
though
he
didn’t
provide
a
timeline
for
development
and
rollout.

“There’ll
be
some
cars
that
Tesla
owns
itself.”
he
said,
“But
then
for
the
fleet
that
is
owned
by
our
customers,
it
will
be
like
an
Airbnb
thing.
You
can
add
or
subtract
your
car
to
the
fleet
whenever
you
want.”

Regarding
the
Cybertruck,
which
hit
the
market
in
late
2023,
Musk
said
deliveries
are
picking
up.
He
said
the
company
hit
a
weekly
record
of
1,300
shipments.

Musk
promised
Tesla
would
move
into
“limited
production”
of
Optimus
in
2025
and
test
out
humanoid
robots
in
its
own
factories
next
year.
Next
year,
he
predicted,
the
company
will
have
“over
1,000,
or
a
few
thousand,
Optimus
robots
working
at
Tesla.”

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