What to Expect From Tesla's Annual Shareholder Meeting Thursday

Tesla, Inc. TSLA is scheduled to hold its annual shareholder meeting Thursday.

The Venue: This time around, the annual affair will be presented from the company's Giga Austin at 5:30 p.m. ET in a virtual-only format.

A change in venue was communicated by the company on Sept. 27 along with other updates to the original announcement made on Aug. 26. The company had earlier planned to present the meeting from its flagship Fremont Giga.

The Agenda: Tesla has four proposals to be discussed at the meeting. These include:

- Election of two Class II directors to serve for a term of three years
- amendments to certificate of incorporation to reduce director terms to two years
- amendments to certificate of incorporation and bylaws to eliminate applicable supermajority voting requirements
- ratification of the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as Tesla's independent registered public accounting firm for the fiscal year ending December 2021

A supermajority voting provision requires certain categories of bylaws to be approved by the affirmative vote of at least 66%, or two-thirds of the total voting power of all outstanding shares of Tesla common stock. The company is proposing to eliminate this.

Tesla has also put up for re-election board members James Murdoch, son of medial mogul Rupert Murdoch, and Kimbal Musk, the brother of CEO Elon Musk .

Proxy advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services has recommended rejecting the two directors, citing its view that they have been excessively compensated.

Related Link: Why This Analyst Thinks Tesla Stock Is Worth Far Less Than Its Current Valuation

The Shareholder Proposals: Shareholders have put forward five proposals, including the reduction of a director's term to one year, additional reporting on diversity and inclusion efforts, reporting on employee arbitration, assigning responsibility for strategic oversight of human capital management to an independent board-level committee and additional reporting on human rights.

Tesla has accepted only the first proposal for discussion and rejected the other four,which pertain primarily to diversity and inclusion. The company's rejection assumes importance because of the $137 million in damages a jury ordered Tesla to pay for alleged racism in workplace.
"The virtual meeting will feature live audio webcasts, plus the option for stockholders to submit votes and written comments and questions on meeting agenda items," Tesla said in definitive proxy statement filed in late September.

Investor Questions That Could Be Addressed: Tesla has invited investors to ask and upvote questions that they would like addressed.
About 3,265 questions have been posted on the page so far. Some of the questions with the highest upvotes are the Cybertruck production start timeline and the rate of ramp; a potential stock split; the possibility of the company's proprietary 4680 battery cell launching this year; dividend plans; and a quarterly update on the energy business.

New Headquarters On The Horizon? Given that the venue was shifted to Giga Austin, tongues have begun wagging about the company potentially shifting its headquarters to Austin.

Citing Musk spending more time at Giga Austin, CFO Zachary Kirkhorn buying a house in Austin and the company datelining its last two press releases as from Austin, Texas, Bloomberg said a shift in corporate headquarters to Texas could be a possibility.

TSLA Price Action: Tesla shares gained 0.28% Wednesday, closing at $782.75. 

Related Link: Why Tesla's Q3 Numbers Are 'Eye Popping' and Hard to Poke Holes In