Tesla Confirms Annual Shareholder Meeting In August, Delays Proxy Filing: What This Means For Investors

After delaying the filing of its proxy statement, Tesla, Inc. TSLA confirmed the date for its annual shareholder meeting.

What Happened:  Tesla's annual shareholder meeting will be held on Aug. 4 in Austin, Texas, the company confirmed through a tweet on its official Twitter handle.

The announcement comes close on the heels of the filing of an amended 10-K/A annual report on Monday, wherein Tesla said it will delay the filing of its definitive proxy statement for the 2022 annual meeting of stockholders.

See Also: How To Buy Tesla (TSLA) Stock

SEC mandate requires the filing of the proxy statement within 120 days of the end of the previous fiscal year. This rendered May 2 as the deadline by which the company should have filed the proxy statement, given the 120 days expired by April 30, a non-working day. An extension is allowed for companies that incorporate information from the proxy statement into their 10-Ks.

Tesla did include some proxy filing information into its amended 10-K, and as it has done in two previous years, the company has sought an extension.

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Benzinga's Take:  Tesla sounded out its intention of announcing a stock split through an 8-K filing in late March. When Tesla solicited questions from shareholders that need to be addressed on the earnings call, the most upvoted question was regarding the split ratio. 

This does not come as a surprise, as the previous stock split announced by the company in August 2020 led to a strong rally in Tesla shares. Some are also anxious about the dilution the split could have on the stock, which is currently locked in a lackluster trading range amid Elon Musk's $44 billion deal to take Twitter, Inc. TWTR private.

Tesla usually conducts the annual shareholder meeting in June and ever since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, it has been delayed to October.

The delay in proxy filing could be due to Musk's intention of getting the Twitter deal done, according to Tesla backer and Future Fund co-founder Gary Black.  On the contrary, the analyst also sees the risk of the Twitter deal falling through due to the delay.

Musk currently owns 163 million Tesla shares and has pledged 92.3 million shares, leaving another 70.7 million shares that are available for pledging, the analyst noted. At $850 per share and a 20% loan-to-value ratio, the maximum margin loan that can be availed is $12 billion.

"Every $10/sh TSLA decline cuts $141M in margin loan," he added.

Tesla closed Monday's session 3.70% at $902.94, according to  Benzinga Pro data.

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