Tesla (TSLA) shareholders show overwhelming support for Elon Musk despite controversies

Tesla (TSLA) shareholders are showing overwhelming support for Elon Musk in a reelection vote despite the recent controversies after buying Twitter.

Many Tesla shareholders have been unhappy with Musk since he acquired Twitter. There were many different reasons for it.

Putting aside all the political and ideological stuff that he said on Twitter that has pissed off people, more concretely, it was that he sold tens of billions worth of Tesla’s stock to buy the social media platform, contributing to a significant decline in the stock price.

There was also the fact that he had Tesla engineers come work on Twitter, while Musk was believed to be spending less time at Tesla.

Some Tesla investors were calling for the board to rein him in, with some going as far as asking for him to not be CEO any longer.

While only the board can fire the CEO, shareholders ultimately vote for who is on the board, and they had a chance to voice their concern with Musk because his seat was up for reelection at this annual shareholder meeting.

We already knew he had been reelected at the meeting – this was never really at risk – but we didn’t know by how many votes.

Today, Tesla released the official results of the votes, and it was overwhelmingly in Musk’s favor:

Only 86 million shares were voted against Musk’s reelection to the board. He had the strongest support out of the three board members voted upon.

Denholm, the board chairwoman, was challenged the most here, with almost half a billion shares voted against her.

Unsurprisingly, JB Straubel is seeing strong support for his election to the board for the first time.

Electrek’s Take

While some shareholders are unhappy with Musk, I think it’s clear that the vast majority of them still want him to be as involved with the company as possible.

I think a strong number of them might not be opposed to the idea of him eventually stepping down as CEO for someone, let’s say, more stable and have him stay in a visionary role.

But for now, I’d argue that he is still more positive than negative for Tesla overall.

What do you think? Let us know in the comment section below.