If You Invested $1,000 In Tesla Stock When Zachary Kirkhorn Was The CFO, Here's How Much You Made

After 13 years with Tesla Inc TSLA, Chief Financial Officer Zachary Kirkhorn is stepping down from the electric vehicle company.

The move comes after serving as the CFO for four years. Here’s a look back at how shares of Tesla have done with Kirkhorn as one of the key executives for the company.

What Happened: Kirkhorn served various roles with Tesla over the course of 13 years, before moving into the chief financial officer role in March 2019. The announcement that Kirkhorn was stepping down drew mixed reactions with some questioning if he had a disagreement with Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

Musk took to social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, to thank Kirkhorn for his time with the company.

The Tesla CEO also brushed off the notion of Kirkhorn leaving for any potential conflict with the company or management.

“13 years is a long tour of duty. Zach will spend time with friends & family, then do something else,” Musk said in response to a question of Kirkhorn getting a job offer somewhere else.

Future Fund’s Gary Black took to X to share that he believed Kirkhorn may have wanted out from the company at the end of the year and received pushback from Musk.

With the announcement that Tesla has a new chief financial officer, Tesla influencer Sawyer Merritt went on X to share an article from Forbes from 2019 that expressed concern for the company and the departure of its previous CFO Deepak Ahuja being a “negative for the stock.”

“Zackary Kirkhorn’s appointment as his replacement was met with skepticism by many, signaling potential challenges. The announcement led to a 6% drop in the stock price on that day. However, Tesla went on to achieve multiple record-breaking years (and continues to do so),” Merritt wrote.

Merritt went on to say that Tesla’s new CFO Vaibhav Taneja has been at Tesla for six years and Tesla still has Musk as the CEO and Tom Zhu as the senior vice president of Automotive and Andrew Baglino as senior vice president of Powertrain and Energy Engineering.

The move by Kirkhorn to step down also came after the executive sold shares of the electric vehicle company several times in 2023 as part of a 10b5-1 pre-scheduled plan.

The most recent sale by Kirkhorn reported on July 7 saw 3,750 TSLA shares sold at an average of $278.70, recognizing a sale price of $1.05 million. At the time of the filing, Kirkhorn had a stake of 197,540 shares of Tesla remaining, which are valued currently at more than $49 million.

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Investing $1,000 in Tesla: Investors who were less concerned about a new CFO taking over at Tesla than others saw a strong return during the last four years.

Kirkhorn was named the chief financial officer of Tesla on March 14, 2019. Shares of Tesla traded at a split-adjusted $19.69 on that day.

An investor could have purchased 50.79 shares of Tesla at the time with a $1,000 investment.

The $1,000 investment would have turned into $12,771.15 if it was held until Monday, Aug. 8, 2023, when it was announced Kirkhorn was stepping down.

This marks a hypothetical return of 1,177.1% during Kirkhorn’s time as the CFO of Tesla.

For comparison, the same $1,000 invested in the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust SPY would be worth $1,713.73 today for a gain of 71.4%. The SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust tracks the S&P 500 Index, made up of 500 of the largest companies in the United States.

As the math shows, sometimes it pays to believe in a company even with the departure of one key executive.

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