Tesla, Musk buys $1 billion worth of shares

Tesla's stock rose 3% on Wall Street (but spiked more than 7%) after the ceo, Elon Musk, announced his first open market share purchase since February 2020. Musk bought 2.57 million shares at various prices on Friday for a total of about $1 billion, a major acquisition that traders interpreted as a vote of confidence from the CEO.

On Friday, the shares were slightly down on the start of the year, despite a recent rally, with the stock up more than 25% in the last three months.

This type of transaction is rare for Musk: the last purchase, around 200,000 shares worth around $10 million, dates back to 14 February 2020, according to Verity data, reported by Cnbc. It is its largest purchase ever in terms of value. Earlier this month, the company said it would ask shareholders to approve a new compensation package for Musk that could total up to $975 billion, based on several ambitious targets. Before Friday's purchases, Musk owned about 13 per cent of Tesla.

The entrepreneur had sold more than $20 billion worth of shares in the company in 2022, the year he acquired Twitter. The transaction of the last few days, on the other hand, is a demonstration of confidence in Tesla's prospects after a difficult first half of the year in which vehicle sales fell by 13% worldwide. Although Musk dwelt on the outlook for robotaxis and humanoid robots, he warned that the company could go through 'a few difficult quarters' after the US decided to eliminate incentives for the purchase of electric vehicles by the end of this month.

Tesla's automotive business continued to show signs of strain, with Cox Automotive estimating that its share of the US electric vehicle market fell below 40 per cent in August. Registrations continued to decline last month in major European markets, and vehicle shipments from the company's Shanghai factory fell in both July and August.