Investor's Corner
Tesla releases list of shareholder proposals ahead of annual meeting
Tesla has released its list of shareholder proposals ahead of its 2023 Annual Shareholder Meeting, held at Giga Texas.
Tesla’s shareholder meeting has become well known in the car world for its extravagance and the “hot takes” often issued by the automaker’s CEO, Elon Musk. Now, before its 2023 annual shareholder meeting at Giga Texas, the company has released its list of shareholder proposals which investors will have the opportunity to vote on.
As initially reported by Reuters, Tesla has released a list of five proposals to be voted on at the shareholder meeting on May 16th. The list includes many significant changes and a controversial investigation prompted by an Icelandic investing group.
The first proposal, which has gone viral recently, will vote on the Board nomination of previous Tesla co-founder JB Straubel, who has since left the company in 2019. Since his time at Tesla, Straubel has co-founded another business, Redwood Materials, which works closely with the American EV giant and other automakers to recycle battery materials like lithium, nickel, and cobalt, to name a few.
Of the Tesla co-founders, Straubel is the favorite of current CEO Elon Musk, who has previously stated he was regretful he did not work solely with him. Straubel will be the first Board nomination following the company’s recent Board member nomination rule change.
Besides Straubel, Elon Musk, and current Board member Robyn Denholm are up for re-election.
The second proposal concerns how frequently the Tesla Board will hold “non-binding advisory votes” regarding executives’ compensation. Shareholders will have the choice between the Board voting every year, every two years, or every three years. The Board currently recommends that the vote be held every three years.
The third proposal is the most controversial and has received significant shareholder attention since being released. Shareholders will vote on if a “key person risk report” be assembled, which would investigate and report on key persons, succession plans, and more that may put the business at risk. The proposal from the aforementioned Icelandic investment firm stems from the concern that Tesla may be too dependent on Elon Musk. The Board recommends voting against the proposal, arguing it would cause unnecessary harm.
The fourth proposal regards the compensation of CEO Elon Musk, recently promoted VP of Automotive Tom Zhu, VP of Powertrain and Energy Engineering Andrew Baglino, and CFO Zachary Kirkhorn. Shareholders will vote to either approve or deny the compensation plans for each of the executives, a measure that is widely expected to pass.
Fifth and finally, shareholders will vote on the appointment of Tesla’s private accounting firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC), as the business’s annual financial auditing service, a position that PWC has held for 17 years.
The Tesla shareholder meeting will be streamed on Youtube and on the Tesla Investor Relations site.
William is invested in Tesla and is not a certified financial advisor.
What do you think of the article? Do you have any comments, questions, or concerns? Shoot me an email at william@teslarati.com. You can also reach me on Twitter @WilliamWritin. If you have news tips, email us at tips@teslarati.com!
Tesla stock (NASDAQ: TSLA) closed at an all-time high on Tuesday, jumping over 3 percent during the day and finishing at $489.88.
The price beats the previous record close, which was $479.86.
Shares have had a crazy year, dipping more than 40 percent from the start of the year. The stock then started to recover once again around late April, when its price started to climb back up from the low $200 level.
This week, Tesla started to climb toward its highest levels ever, as it was revealed on Sunday that the company was testing driverless Robotaxis in Austin. The spike in value pushed the company’s valuation to $1.63 trillion.
Tesla Robotaxi goes driverless as Musk confirms Safety Monitor removal testing
It is the seventh-most valuable company on the market currently, trailing Nvidia, Apple, Alphabet (Google), Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta.
Shares closed up $14.57 today, up over 3 percent.
The stock has gone through a lot this year, as previously mentioned. Shares tumbled in Q1 due to CEO Elon Musk’s involvement with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which pulled his attention away from his companies and left a major overhang on their valuations.
However, things started to rebound halfway through the year, and as the government started to phase out the $7,500 tax credit, demand spiked as consumers tried to take advantage of it.
Q3 deliveries were the highest in company history, and Tesla responded to the loss of the tax credit with the launch of the Model 3 and Model Y Standard.
Additionally, analysts have announced high expectations this week for the company on Wall Street as Robotaxi continues to be the focus. With autonomy within Tesla’s sights, things are moving in the direction of Robotaxi being a major catalyst for growth on the Street in the coming year.
Elon Musk
Tesla needs to come through on this one Robotaxi metric, analyst says
“We think the key focus from here will be how fast Tesla can scale driverless operations (including if Tesla’s approach to software/hardware allows it to scale significantly faster than competitors, as the company has argued), and on profitability.”
Tesla needs to come through on this one Robotaxi metric, Mark Delaney of Goldman Sachs says.
Tesla is in the process of rolling out its Robotaxi platform to areas outside of Austin and the California Bay Area. It has plans to launch in five additional cities, including Houston, Dallas, Miami, Las Vegas, and Phoenix.
However, the company’s expansion is not what the focus needs to be, according to Delaney. It’s the speed of deployment.
The analyst said:
“We think the key focus from here will be how fast Tesla can scale driverless operations (including if Tesla’s approach to software/hardware allows it to scale significantly faster than competitors, as the company has argued), and on profitability.”
Profitability will come as the Robotaxi fleet expands. Making that money will be dependent on when Tesla can initiate rides in more areas, giving more customers access to the program.
There are some additional things that the company needs to make happen ahead of the major Robotaxi expansion, one of those things is launching driverless rides in Austin, the first city in which it launched the program.
This week, Tesla started testing driverless Robotaxi rides in Austin, as two different Model Y units were spotted with no occupants, a huge step in the company’s plans for the ride-sharing platform.
Tesla Robotaxi goes driverless as Musk confirms Safety Monitor removal testing
CEO Elon Musk has been hoping to remove Safety Monitors from Robotaxis in Austin for several months, first mentioning the plan to have them out by the end of 2025 in September. He confirmed on Sunday that Tesla had officially removed vehicle occupants and started testing truly unsupervised rides.
Although Safety Monitors in Austin have been sitting in the passenger’s seat, they have still had the ability to override things in case of an emergency. After all, the ultimate goal was safety and avoiding any accidents or injuries.
Goldman Sachs reiterated its ‘Neutral’ rating and its $400 price target. Delaney said, “Tesla is making progress with its autonomous technology,” and recent developments make it evident that this is true.
Investor's Corner
Tesla gets bold Robotaxi prediction from Wall Street firm
Last week, Andrew Percoco took over Tesla analysis for Morgan Stanley from Adam Jonas, who covered the stock for years. Percoco seems to be less optimistic and bullish on Tesla shares, while still being fair and balanced in his analysis.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) received a bold Robotaxi prediction from Morgan Stanley, which anticipates a dramatic increase in the size of the company’s autonomous ride-hailing suite in the coming years.
Last week, Andrew Percoco took over Tesla analysis for Morgan Stanley from Adam Jonas, who covered the stock for years. Percoco seems to be less optimistic and bullish on Tesla shares, while still being fair and balanced in his analysis.
Percoco dug into the Robotaxi fleet and its expansion in the coming years in his latest note, released on Tuesday. The firm expects Tesla to increase the Robotaxi fleet size to 1,000 vehicles in 2026. However, that’s small-scale compared to what they expect from Tesla in a decade.
Tesla expands Robotaxi app access once again, this time on a global scale
By 2035, Morgan Stanley believes there will be one million Robotaxis on the road across multiple cities, a major jump and a considerable fleet size. We assume this means the fleet of vehicles Tesla will operate internally, and not including passenger-owned vehicles that could be added through software updates.
He also listed three specific catalysts that investors should pay attention to, as these will represent the company being on track to achieve its Robotaxi dreams:
- Opening Robotaxi to the public without a Safety Monitor. Timing is unclear, but it appears that Tesla is getting closer by the day.
- Improvement in safety metrics without the Safety Monitor. Tesla’s ability to improve its safety metrics as it scales miles driven without the Safety Monitor is imperative as it looks to scale in new states and cities in 2026.
- Cybercab start of production, targeted for April 2026. Tesla’s Cybercab is a purpose-built vehicle (no steering wheel or pedals, only two seats) that is expected to be produced through its state-of-the-art unboxed manufacturing process, offering further cost reductions and thus accelerating adoption over time.
Robotaxi stands to be one of Tesla’s most significant revenue contributors, especially as the company plans to continue expanding its ride-hailing service across the world in the coming years.
Its current deployment strategy is controlled and conservative to avoid any drastic and potentially program-ruining incidents.
So far, the program, which is active in Austin and the California Bay Area, has been widely successful.
Delaware Supreme Court reinstates Elon Musk’s 2018 Tesla CEO pay package
Tesla Cybercab tests are going on overdrive with production-ready units
