- The estranged son of Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch exercised some of his stock options, contributing to the worst single-day loss for Tesla since September 2020.
Tesla shareholders just can’t catch a break right now.
On Monday, Elon Musk’s company revealed which corporate insider was the latest to cash out stock at the worst possible time: James Murdoch.
A member of the board since July 2017, the estranged son of Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch exercised call options worth 54,776 shares granted to him as compensation. He then promptly turned around and liquidated them for $13.2 million in cash that very day, contributing to the worst single-day drop since September 2020.
Murdoch’s sale follows several by fellow nonexecutive directors, Tesla chair Robyn Denholm and Elon Musk’s younger brother, Kimbal, as well as more recently finance chief Vaibhav Taneja.
Murdoch, heir to what the New York Times calls the “most powerful media empire in the English-speaking world,” is one of the defendants that settled in January with a Delaware court to return a total of $920 million in excess pay they received.
Tesla did not respond to Fortune’s request for comment.
‘Earlier I angrily said to fire Robyn Denholm’
The company’s emphasis on stock-based compensation is coming back to haunt it right now. According to the SEC filing, the sale by Murdoch—much like the younger Musk’s recent transaction—was not executed as part of a 10b5-1 trading plan like Denholm’s.
He chose this juncture despite a withering four straight weeks of declines. Collectively, the drop has erased all the gains in the heady aftermath of Trump’s election, sending Tesla to its lowest point since reporting third-quarter earnings in late October.
Whatever his motivations, Murdoch’s sale leaves the carmaker’s fiercely faithful following of retail shareholders reeling once more. Many continue to post screen grabs of their buy orders to shore up morale and rally others to hold the line in hopes others won’t likewise sell in a Tesla version of the prisoner’s dilemma.
One influential voice, Zacks Investment Research strategist Mayur Thaker, revealed last week he had been reprimanded by the community’s unofficial maternal figure, Alexandra Merz, after demanding the head of the board chair following her insider sales.
“Earlier I angrily said to fire Robyn Denholm,” he wrote, before adding that Merz reminded him she had a settlement to pay. “My apologies for incorrectly jumping to conclusions.”
Tesla sentiment may be the worst since Musk acquired Twitter
On Monday, Merz sought to channel the frustration constructively, polling her followers on what they would tell Tesla’s board of directors if given the chance. The top three recommendations she then forwarded to Denholm, who expressed her thanks.
“We should hear from her,” Merz told a “Cyberbull” space on X, saying the Tesla chair needed the immediate feedback from her investors given the “fire” spreading in the community.
Tesla investors have been here many times before, most recently early last year when fourth-quarter sales disappointed, briefly gifting China’s BYD leadership of the industry for the first time.
A difficult Chinese market then saw sales in the first three months of 2024 crater, before Musk uttered the line that would put a floor under the stock: “Tesla Robotaxi unveil on 8/8.” Three weeks later, he then fully restored investor faith that Tesla’s growth story remained intact by accelerating the launch of a new entry model into the first half of 2025. With just three months left to go, there’s been neither hide nor hair of the vehicle.
This time, sentiment may very well be at its lowest level since Musk first embarked on his political journey with the acquisition of Twitter in October 2022. Following a disastrous December, Tesla shares plunged to a low of $100 at year-end before rallying on the back of a price war unleashed by Musk. While it managed to deliver one final annual increase in Tesla volumes in 2023, it significantly hobbled EV demand. Potential adopters were spooked by the unintended collapse in resale values across the EV industry, and eventually Tesla suffered its first annual sales drop since the launch of the Model 3 in 2017.
