Elon Musk wants to take Tesla private and remain in control of the company. He may not be able to do both.
The plans to take Tesla private are not clear, but Musk suggested in a blog post this week he’s going to need a lot of help to buy out shareholders.
If his plan succeeds, the new stakeholders will probably have a much louder voice inside Tesla than the analysts and short-sellers he despises today. They could conceivably demand changes or even his ouster.
Musk said he wants Tesla’s stock to be taken private at a premium value of $420 a share, but he also expects about two-thirds of shares now held in the publicly traded Tesla (TSLA) to maintain their current ownership.
That suggests at least 33% of the shares would need to be repurchased before the company could be taken private. That block of stock alone is more than Musk owns or could buy by exercising his options (his stock and options are equal to about 22% of Tesla’s oustanding shares). And he doesn’t have a lot of free cash to make significant additional purchases, as most of his non-Tesla net worth is tied up in his other company, privately held SpaceX, according to Gene Munster, managing partner at Loup Ventures and a top tech analyst.
