On Valentine's Day, February 14, 2022, information came to light that Tesla CEO Elon Musk gifted more than 5 million Tesla shares to an unnamed charity. The details came from an SEC Form 5 filing.
According to the filing, which doesn't provide one of the most important details – Who received the donation? – Musk donated a total of 5,044,000 Tesla shares, which have a value of about $4.6 billion (approx. £3.4 billion) based on the current stock price.
Interestingly, the stock donations go back to November 19, 2021, when the shares would have been worth nearly $6 billion (£4.4 billion).
Based on the information in an article published by our friends at Teslarati, the SEC filing specifies that the transaction was a "bonafide gift." The filing reads:
“Represent a bona fide gift of the Issuer’s common stock by the Reporting Person to charity.”
While we're not willing to speculate about which charity Musk may have donated to, several publications are pointing to the November 2021 tweets directed to Musk about solving world hunger.
Musk did say he'd be willing to help, but only if he was told exactly how his $6-billion donation would solve world hunger. However, we didn't hear a whole lot more about the situation following those tweet exchanges, and Musk never announced that he donated. Moreover, he said he'd "sell Tesla stock right now," though in this case, he didn't actually sell the stock for cash, rather he gave away the shares as a free gift.
It wouldn't come as a surprise if Musk did donate without making it public. The CEO helped with the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, as well as the power outages in Puerto Rico, without personal "advertising" that he was providing financial assistance. He's also made multiple recent donations to struggling Texas school districts.
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At this point, we'll have to wait and see if we learn more about Musk's donation down the road.
Source: Teslarati