
The company announced on Friday that the board approved a 3-to-1 share split, its first split since August 2020. The division must be approved by the shareholders at the company’s annual meeting in August.
Tesla (TSLA) closed Friday at just over $ 696 per share. If the split were to take place today, the stock would be worth $ 232 per share.
Do not worry, Tesla shareholders (who are pretty much all with a retirement account these days) – your efforts will still be worth the same. You will have three times more shares when all is said and done.
Companies share their shares for several reasons: Splitter can put its shares within reach of smaller, individual investors. It helps companies get liquidity and splits can create more demand for the company’s shares.
Although institutional investors with deep pockets do not care about the company’s overall share price, individual investors may be turned off by high-priced stocks. The growth of free-to-trade apps, including Robinhood, E-Trade and others, has made stock splits much more important in recent years.
Tesla said that they took these factors into account – as well as employees who get paid in the company’s shares.
“We believe the share split will help reset the market price of our ordinary shares, so that our employees will have more flexibility in managing their equity, all of which, in our view, can help maximize shareholder value,” Tesla said in a regulatory filing. . Friday. “In addition, as retail investors have expressed a high level of interest in investing in our share, we believe that the share split will also make our ordinary shares more accessible to our retail shareholders.”
Tesla announced plans for a split in March, but did not announce any relationship. On Friday, it noted that the stock has risen 43.5% since the previous share split almost three years ago, although the shares have fallen 30% since it announced these split plans. It may have planned to have a larger share split if it had not fallen so much.
This year as Big Tech and the wider market have taken a beating from inflation and higher interest rates. But Tesla in particular has struggled this year in part due to CEO Elon Musk’s attempts to leverage its huge Tesla stake to buy Twitter. He even sold $ 8.5 billion in Tesla shares to raise cash to buy, which helped push Tesla shares down.
Other Big Tech companies have also recently announced stock splits to increase their affordability and attractiveness to everyday investors. Amazons (AMZN) The 20-for-1 share split took effect on Monday. Alphabet, as owner Google (GOOGL), also approved a 20-for-1 split that takes effect in July. Online store Shopify (SHOP) has a 10-to-1 share split planned for later in June, while meme shareholder GameStop proposed to split the share as well.
Tesla’s move may also be aimed at getting it included in the famous Dow Jones Industrial Average, which tends to include cheaper stocks. apple (AAPL)for example, announced a share split of 7 for 1 in 2014 and was included in the Dow in 2015.
The split is no guarantee that it will be included in the Dow, but the index may have the world’s most valuable car company and a pioneer in electric vehicles.
Shares in Tesla rose 1% in expanded trading.
Tesla also announced that Larry Ellison, chairman of the board Oracle (ORCL) had decided to leave the board. Ellison has been on the Tesla board since December 2018.
Large share splits in companies have become very popular in recent years. But one company with an alarmingly high share price has never split and said it would never: Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA).
At $ 439,780 per share, Berkshire shares are unapproachable to most individual investors. That is why it offers its B shares (BRKB)which has split recently, for just under $ 292.
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