With Tesla's strong quarterly report on Wednesday, Chief Executive Elon Musk has scored a hat trick of performance goals worth a combined $23 billion in new compensation.
Tesla reported quarterly revenue of $18.76 billion and so-called adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) of $5.02 billion. Combined with the previous three quarters' results, that surpasses milestones that trigger the vesting of the ninth through 11th of 12 tranches of options granted to Musk in his 2018 pay package.
Musk Receives no salary at Tesla. His pay package requires Tesla's market capitalization and financial growth to hit a series of escalating targets.
Each tranche gives Musk the option to buy 8.4 million Tesla shares at $70.01 each, a discount of about 90 percent from Wednesday's $977.20 closing price. At the stock's current price, the three options tranches that will vest as a result of Tesla's March-quarter performance could generate a profit of about $23 billion, or almost $7.7 billion per tranche.
Late last year, Musk netted $16.4 billion from selling about 10 percent of his stake in Tesla to meet to meet tax withholding obligations related to the exercise of stock options.
This may be the highest paid CEO ever. The interests of listed company executives and shareholders are aligned. How does this affect Tesla's stock price going forward?
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