By Cristian Bustos. Originally published at ValueWalk.
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA), donated 5.04 million shares worth $5.7 billion of his automotive company to philanthropic causes in November, according to a stock market filing released Monday night. The beneficiaries of the donations remain unknown.
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Shedding For Charity
As reported by Reuters, Elon Musk donated just over 5 million Tesla shares worth $5.7 billion on the days the donations took place —equivalent to $4.4 billion at closing price Monday. The transactions took place in November during Musk’s stock shed, which was triggered by tax obligations arising from the exercise of stock options.
In the last two months of 2021 and according to calculations by the Wall Street Journal, the Tesla CEO shed a total of $16 billion worth in Tesla shares.
The owner of SpaceX also tweeted in early December that he would pay $11 billion in taxes by the end of last year.
Musk —whose net worth is estimated at $238 billion— has traded blows on Twitter on various occasions with politicians such as Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders who support the introduction of a wealth tax.
Tax Relief
According to MarketWatch, “On Halloween, Musk promised on Twitter TWTR, +2.54% that he would sell Tesla stock and donate $6 billion to the U.N. World Food Program if it ‘can describe on this Twitter thread exactly how $6B will solve world hunger.’”
“The executive director of the program, David Beasley, responded with a proposal on Monday, Nov. 15, and Musk began transferring shares to a charity the following Friday.”
Musk still owns around 2 million more shares than he had when he began his selling spree for a total of 172.6 million.
Since recipients of the donation are unknown, speculations revolve around transactions being made to the Musk Foundation, which, according to Monday’s federal filing, “held a bit less than $1 billion as of the end of June 2020.”
Tesla is part of the Entrepreneur Index, which tracks 60 of the largest publicly traded companies managed by their founders or their founders’ families.
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