As expected, today Tesla announced in a press release that it raised $2 billion of common stock to accelerate the ramp of Model 3 delivery. According to the release,
“Tesla is offering about $1.4 billion of shares with the remaining shares to be sold by Elon Musk to cover tax obligations associated with his concurrent exercise of more than 5.5 million stock options. On a net basis, Mr. Musk will increase his overall Tesla shareholdings through these transactions.”
As previously disclosed earlier this week, the release confirmed that “Elon Musk, Tesla’s CEO, will also be exercising stock options to acquire 5,503,972 shares of Tesla stock. These stock options were granted to Mr. Musk in 2009 and are due to expire in December 2016. Because the value of Tesla stock has increased considerably since 2009, Mr. Musk will owe a significant amount of taxes from exercising these stock options and will fund this tax obligation by selling only the amount of shares needed to do so. ”
An interesting comment in the release was that “To be clear, all cash proceeds from the sale of stock by Mr. Musk will go to the federal and state governments to satisfy the 52% tax withholding on his stock option exercise. In addition, Mr. Musk will be donating 1.2 million shares of his Tesla stock to charity. Mr. Musk is a net buyer of Tesla stock in these transactions.”
TheStreet reported that the shares were sold at $215 per share, a higher price than the $204-$211 range expected earlier in the week, in part due to the share gains prompted by the updated Goldman Sachs BUY rating on Tuesday.
During the day $TSLA stock had multiple swings of as much as $1 on the upside or downside in the span of a few minutes, as the news of the stock sale was propagating through the wires and the various online financial sites. Volatility as the one demonstrated today with $TSLA is good action for day traders, but not useful for swing traders.
The volatile action continued through the close as TSLA stock gained $2 in the span of 15 minutes, closing above $220.
Technical Analysis
Looking at the last 3-day action, we are now 1 session away from a bonafide breakout, looking at pay-day-cycles (3 green Heikin Ashi bars), the MACD almost going positive, and the MACD moving averages “pinching”.
Source: Wall Street I/O
If all goes well, the breakout on the upside may happen as early as Monday. I have added to my position in TSLA Sept $215 calls, and have raised my conditional stop loss from 206 to 210 (this action is often called a “trailing” stop loss). In a subsequent post, I will show how to set up conditional (a.k.a. contingent) stop loss trades, to protect the downside of a trade.
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