Cars and Drivers

Tesla's 5 Largest Shareholders

Paul Ausick

Published: August 3, 2016 9:10 am

Last Updated: January 13, 2020 4:59 am

More than 50% of Tesla Motors Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA) shares outstanding are held by 13 individuals and three investment firms. Of the 13 individuals, CEO Elon Musk owns 26.5% of the outstanding shares, and the other 12 collectively own 1.2%.

The percentages are based on a share count of 131.42 million shares outstanding as of December 31, 2015, according to the company’s definitive proxy statement filed ahead of its May annual stockholders meeting.

That Musk still holds more than a quarter of the company’s shares should be no surprise. What may be surprising is the Musk’s salary in 2015 was a meager $37,584. Chief Financial Officer Jason Wheeler’s salary was almost as low, at $46,154, but Wheeler received nearly $21 million in stock options for the year and Musk received none. Tesla’s chief technical officer, Jeffrey Straubel, was paid a salary of $250,560 in 2015 and received no stock awards.

Here’s a look at Tesla’s top five shareholders.

Elon Musk, founder and CEO, owns 37.19 million shares (26.5% of shares outstanding at the end of December 2015). At Tuesday’s closing price, the shares are valued at $8.45 billion. Musk is also the chairman of SolarCity Corp. (NASDAQ: SCTY), which Tesla is buying for $2.6 billion in stock, and CEO of SpaceX.

Tesla’s second largest shareholder is FMR LLC, a Fidelity company, which owns 10.2% (13.34 million) of Tesla’s outstanding shares. At Tuesday’s closing price, FMR’s stake is valued at $3.03 billion. FMR’s largest holdings include stakes of nearly $26 billion in both classes of Google stock, $17.4 billion in Facebook stock and nearly $16 billion in Apple stock.

Baillie Gifford & Co. is Tesla’s third-largest shareholder, with 10.71 million shares (10.2% of shares outstanding), valued at $2.43 billion as of Tuesday’s close. The investment firm is based in the United Kingdom and has its largest holdings in Amazon ($4.85 billion), Baidu ($4.8 billion) and Alibaba ($3.37 billion).

Tesla’s fourth-largest stockholder is T. Rowe Price Associates, which holds 7.87 million shares, valued at about $1.79 billion. The investment firm’s largest holdings are Amazon ($13.6 billion), Microsoft ($9.23 billion) and Facebook ($7.75 billion).

The fifth largest stockholder is Vanguard Group which holds 4.32 million shares valued at about $981 million. The investment firm also holds large stakes in Apple ($36 billion), Microsoft ($27.4 billion), and Exxon Mobil ($22.35 billion.) [Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story erroneously identified Tesla CTO Jeffrey Straubel as the fifth-largest holder of Tesla stock.]