Tesla CEO Elon Musk donated 11.5 million shares of his stake in the electric carmaker to an undisclosed charity last year, shares worth about $1.9 billion at the time they were donated. .
The donation would make him the second-largest charitable donor in 2022, according to a Chronicle of Philanthropy ranking compiled before Musk’s filing. The Chronicle ranking lists Bill Gates as No. 1 with $5.1 billion in donations, followed by Michael Bloomberg with $1.7 billion.
Musk’s net worth at the end of 2022 was $137 billion, according to Forbes’ real-time billionaires tracker, so the $1.9 billion represented about 1.4% of his net worth at the time. .
Musk’s 2022 giving is below the estimated value of his reported giving for 2021, when he reported that he had donated 5 million Tesla (TSLA) shares, worth an estimated $5.7 billion, at the end of that year.
A stock split in Tesla (TSLA) in August last year means that the number of shares he donated in 2021 was also 30% higher than his donations in 2022, based on the split adjustment.
Musk’s 2021 donations also went to an undisclosed charity. He was challenged by David Beasley, director of the UN food program, to donate $6 billion to fight global hunger.
Beasley said a donation of that size could feed more than 40 million people in 43 countries that are “on the verge of starvation”. Musk responded on Twitter at the time if the World Food Program “can describe in this Twitter thread exactly how $6 billion will solve world hunger, I’m going to sell Tesla stock now and do it.”
Musk’s 2021 donation of Tesla stock followed shortly after that exchange, but there was never confirmation of where the stock went.
A small reduction in Musk holdings
The most recent stock donation represented 1.6% of Musk’s stake in the company at the end of last year, factoring in the shares he owned and the vested options he has to buy additional shares.
As of the end of the year, he had an additional 25.3 million options exercisable when the company reached certain financial targets, an grant the company had previously said was likely. So Musk made the donation knowing he would soon receive options to buy twice as many shares at a nominal price.
Musk has sold a much larger portion of his Tesla stake over the last 18 months than he gave away. First, he sold $16.4 billion worth of Tesla stock in 2021, with most of it going to pay a large income tax bill he faced for exercising options in 2021 before they expired.
. Then, in 2022, he sold $22.9 billion worth of Tesla stock while raising money to buy Twitter.
Tesla stock had its worst year on record in 2022, losing 65% of its value. The drop in stock prices has knocked him out of his position as the richest person in the world. But after a rocky start this year, they’ve bounced back nicely in 2023, up 70% year-to-date.
At Tuesday’s closing price, the 11.5 million shares Musk donated last year are worth $2.4 billion.
Musk is now the second richest person on the planet, behind Bernard Arnault, chairman of French luxury goods giant LVMH, according to an estimate by Forbes’ real-time billionaire tracker, with a net worth of around $ 196.5 billion.
The typical American family has a net worth of around $121,700, according to the latest Federal Reserve estimate. So the current value of $2.4 billion from Musk’s donations last year, compared to his current net worth, is the equivalent of a typical family giving $1,500, or just under $30 a week.
Source: CNN Brasil
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