Elon Musk May Sell More Tesla Stock, His Top Spot On Billionaires List Could Be Short-Lived: Survey

Tesla, Inc. TSLA CEO Elon Musk may end up not buying Twitter, Inc. TWTR but he could continue to offload his Tesla stake, results of the Bloomberg MLIV Pulse survey showed.

The survey probed 1,562 respondents, including portfolio managers and retail traders, and was conducted between July 25 and July 29, Bloomberg said.

Musk’s Twitter Deal May Not Be Done: About three-fourths of the respondents expect Musk to renege on the Twitter deal, and one-third are of the view the billionaire will settle by paying more than $1 billion to Twitter. About 27% believe Musk will be ordered to pay the $1 billion breakup fee.

Tesla’s Musk made public a passive stake in Twitter in early April and then went on to launch an offer to take Twitter private for $54.20 per share, or $44 billion in total. After holding off for a while, Twitter relented and agreed to Musk’s proposal, culminating in an agreement.
Musk, however, walked away from the deal in mid-May, citing discrepancies in the number of spam accounts the company was reporting. Twitter has initiated legal proceedings against Musk to enforce the deal.

Musk’s Stock Sale May Continue: Bloomberg’s survey showed that about 68% of the respondents believe Musk will continue to sell his stake in Tesla, irrespective of the outcome of the Twitter deal.

After a November poll asking followers for their recommendation on whether he should sell Tesla shares, Musk divested 15 million of his stake in Tesla. Following the Twitter deal, he sold an incremental 9.4 million shares.

If the stock sale is accompanied by a definitive agreement on the Twitter buy, Tesla stock could escape the brunt of the selling, Interactive Brokers’ chief strategist Steve Sosnick said, according to Bloomberg.

“A definitive end to Twitter would remove a distraction and theoretically allow Musk to focus more on Tesla,” he added.

Related Link: Elon Musk Says Time to Move On From This Category Of Cars, Here's Why

Tesla’s Relative Return Vs. Other Megacaps: About a quarter of respondents expect higher returns for Microsoft Corporation MSFT, the survey found. Almost the same proportion rooted for Amazon, Inc. AMZN generating better returns.

The share of respondents who expect Alphabet, Inc. GOOGL GOOG and Apple, Inc. AAPL to generate better returns were at 21% and 18%, respectively.

Only 12.5% of those surveyed believed Tesla’s relative returns would be better.

Musk’s Top Spot In Billionaires’ List Under Threat: More than half of the respondents think Musk will lose his top position on the billionaires’ list by the end of 2023. The Tesla CEO become the world’s richest man in 2021, capitalizing on the Tesla stock rally that boosted his net worth.

About 33%, however, said Musk will hold on to the top spot until 2025 or later.

Tesla shares closed Friday’s session 5.78% higher at $891.45, according to Benzinga Pro data

Photo: Courtesy of NVIDIA Corporation on flickr