“We believe that the ratification vote that Elon demanded and coerced is deeply flawed as a matter of law, legally ineffective and does not impact our case,” Greg Varallo, a lawyer for the disenchanted Tesla shareholders who challenged Musk’s pay in court, said in a statement.
With the pay package, Mr. Musk would own 20.5 percent of Tesla, up from about 13 percent. Mr. Musk has said he would like a 25 percent stake, noting in January that it would be “enough to be influential, but not so much that I can’t be overturned.” If he didn’t get a stake that large, he said, he would “prefer to build products outside of Tesla.”
Even after the rise this week, Tesla’s stock is down more than 20 percent this year, versus a 14 percent gain in the broader stock market. The company remains the most valuable car company by some distance, at nearly $600 billion, but fears of stiffer competition and flagging demand for its models have weighed on the stock.
At the shareholder meeting on Thursday, Mr. Musk was characteristically bullish on Tesla’s self-driving technology, including a promised fleet of robotaxis, and said that the company’s humanoid robot, called Optimus, would grow into a multitrillion-dollar business of its own.
Market analysts are split on where Tesla goes from here, with about 40 percent rating the stock a “buy,” 20 percent a “sell” and the rest a “hold,” according to FactSet. The range of price forecasts is wide, and averages out to roughly where the stock is trading now.
Bernstein’s price target implies a 30 percent decline, and the analysts rate the stock as “underperform.” Others are more upbeat: Analysts at Wedbush think the stock could rise 50 percent from here, rating it an “outperform. The result of the vote on pay was a “pop the champagne moment,” they wrote. “Tesla is Musk and Musk is Tesla.”
Peter Eavis, Jack Ewing and Michael J. de la Merced contributed reporting.
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