just say no

Tesla shareholders ask investors to vote against Musk's compensation package

The shareholder group said in a letter to shareholders that ratification of Musk's pay package would do nothing to promote Tesla's long-term growth and stability. Photo via cdn.britannica.com

A group of Texas-based Tesla's shareholders is asking investors to vote against a compensation package worth more than $40 billion for CEO Elon Musk, saying that it's not in the electric vehicle maker's best interest.

Tesla is struggling with falling global sales, slowing electric vehicle demand, an aging model lineup and a stock price that has tumbled 30 percent this year.

The shareholder group, which includes New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, SOC Investment Group and Amalgamated Bank, said in a letter to shareholders that ratification of Musk's pay package would do nothing to promote Tesla's long-term growth and stability.

There's also concern that approval of the pay package will potentially lead to lawsuits arguing that it is corporate waste. And Musk is viewed as a part-time CEO at Tesla, with his time increasingly being spent on other business commitments, the letter said.

“Shareholders should not pretend that this award has any kind of incentivizing effect—it does not. What it does have is an excessiveness problem, which has been glaringly apparent from the start,” the group said.

They noted that if shareholders ratify the compensation package, it's possible that another plan will be put forth next year.

“Given Tesla’s history of exponentially larger awards, Musk may well ask for another award,” the group said.

The group is also asking investors to vote against the reelection of board members Kimbal Musk, Elon's brother, and James Murdoch, a former executive at media company Twenty-First Century Fox.

Last month Tesla asked shareholders to restore Musk's pay package, which was valued at $56 billion at the time, that was rejected by a Delaware judge this year. At the time, it also asked to shift the company’s corporate home to Texas.

The changes will be voted on by stockholders at a June 13 annual meeting.

In a letter to shareholders released in a regulatory filing last month, Chairperson Robyn Denholm said that Musk has delivered on the growth it was looking for at the automaker, with Tesla meeting all of the stock value and operational targets in the 2018 package that was approved by shareholders. Shares at the time were up 571 percent since the pay package began.

“Because the Delaware Court second-guessed your decision, Elon has not been paid for any of his work for Tesla for the past six years that has helped to generate significant growth and stockholder value,” Denholm wrote. “That strikes us — and the many stockholders from whom we already have heard — as fundamentally unfair, and inconsistent with the will of the stockholders who voted for it.”

Tesla posted record deliveries of more than 1.8 million electric vehicles worldwide in 2023, but the value of its shares has eroded quickly this year as EV sales soften.

The company said it delivered 386,810 vehicles from January through March, nearly 9 percent fewer than it sold in the same period last year. Future growth is in doubt and it may be a challenge to get shareholders to back a fat pay package in an environment where competition has increased worldwide.

Starting last year, Tesla has cut prices as much as $20,000 on some models. The price cuts caused used electric vehicle values to drop and clipped Tesla’s profit margins.

In April, Tesla said that it was letting about 10 percent of its workers go, about 14,000 people.

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A View From HETI

20-plus companies will pitch at Energy Tech Nexus' Pilotathon during Houston Energy & Climate Startup Week. Photo via Getty Images.

Energy Tech Nexus will host its Pilotathon and Showcase as part of Houston Energy & Climate Startup Week next Tuesday, Sept. 16, featuring insightful talks from industry leaders and pitches from an international group of companies in the clean energy space.

This year's event will center around the theme "Energy Access and Resilience." Attendees will hear pitches from nine Pilotathon pitch companies, as well as the 14 companies that were named to Energy Tech Nexus' COPILOT accelerator earlier this year.

COPILOT partners with Browning the Green Space, a nonprofit that promotes diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in the clean energy and climatetech sectors. The Wells Fargo Innovation Incubator (IN²) at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory backs the COPILOT accelerator, where companies are tasked with developing pilot projects for their innovations.

The nine Pilotathon pitch companies include:

  • Ontario-based AlumaPower, which has developed a breakthrough technology that converts the aluminum-air battery into a "galvanic generator," a long-duration energy source that runs on aluminum as a fuel
  • Calgary-based BioOilSolv, a chemical manufacturing company that has developed cutting-edge biomass-derived solvents
  • Atlanta-based Cultiv8 Fuels, which creates high-quality renewable fuel products derived from hemp
  • Newfoundland-based eDNAtec Inc., a leader in environmental genomics that analyzes biodiversity and ecological health
  • Oregon-based Espiku Inc., which designs and develops water treatment and mineral extraction technologies that rely on low-pressure evaporative cycles
  • New York-based Fast Metals Inc., which has developed a chemical process to extract valuable metals from complex toxic mine tailings that is capable of producing iron, aluminum, scandium, titanium and other rare earth elements using industrial waste and waste CO2 as inputs
  • New Jersey-based Metal Light Inc., which is building a circular, solid metal fuel that will serve as a replacement for diesel fuel
  • Glasgow-based Novosound, which designs and manufactures innovative ultrasound sensors using a thin-film technique to address the limitations of traditional ultrasound with applications in industrial, medical and wearable markets
  • Calgary-based Serenity Power, which has developed a cutting-edge solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) technology

The COPILOT accelerator companies include:

  • Accelerate Wind
  • Aquora Biosystems Inc.
  • EarthEn
  • Electromaim
  • EnKoat
  • GeoFuels
  • Harber Coatings Inc.
  • Janta Power
  • NanoSieve
  • PolyQor Inc.
  • Popper Power
  • Siva Powers America
  • ThermoShade
  • V-Glass Inc.

Read more about them here.

The Pilotathon will also include a keynote from Taylor Chapman, investment manager at New Climate Ventures; Deanna Zhang, CEO at V1 Climate Solutions; and Jolene Gurevich, director of fellowship experience at Breakthrough Energy. The Texas Climate Tech Collective will present its latest study on the Houston climate tech and innovation ecosystem.

CEOs Moji Karimi of Cemvita, Laureen Meroueh of Hertha Metals and others will also participate in a panel on successful pilots. Investors from NetZero Ventures, Halliburton Labs, Chevron, Saudi Aramco, Prithvi VC and other organizations will also be on-site. Find registration information here.

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