By Michael Elkins
A petition of Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) shareholders on Change.org asking for the company to initiate a share buyback has reached over 3,600 signatures. Investors have noticed pressure on the stock due to CEO Elon musk’s “Twitter overhang" and have called on the eccentric billionaire to initiate the buyback.
Among the numerous Tesla bulls calling for a buyback is Leo KoGuan, who is believed to be the third largest individual TSLA shareholder. Gary Black, managing partner of The Future Fund LLC has also called for action.
Musk noted during the electric vehicle company’s third-quarter earnings call that Tesla is open to a buyback. According to him, many members of the board have received questions on the topic. Musk also noted that a share buyback is possible, even in a downside scenario.
“We’ve debated the buyback idea extensively at the board level. The board generally thinks that it makes sense to do a buyback. But we want to work through the right process to do a buyback, but it’s certainly possible for us to do a buyback on the order of $5 billion to $10 billion. Even in the downside scenario next year, even if next year is – was a very difficult year, we still have the ability to do a $5 billion to $10 billion buyback,” Musk said.
Shares of TSLA are down 6.83% near end of day trading on Monday.