At the beginning of the new year in 2022, Tesla CEO Elon Musk will have a strong start. On Monday, local time in the United States, Musk’s net assets also increased by $32.6 billion thanks to the skyrocketing Tesla stock price.
On Monday, local time, Tesla’s stock price closed up 13.53%, rising to $1199.78 per share. According to Forbes magazine estimates, Musk’s net worth is currently 304.2 billion U.S. dollars, which once again helped him break through the 300 billion U.S. threshold. In November 2021, Musk’s wealth briefly exceeded US$300 billion for the first time.
Musk is still the richest person in the world, more than $100 billion more than Bernard Arnault, the chief executive of French fashion giant LVMH, which ranks second. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos (Jeff Bezos) currently ranks third on the rich list.
As always, Musk’s wealth surge was mainly due to Tesla’s soaring stock price. On Sunday, the electric car manufacturer announced that it had delivered more than 936,000 vehicles in 2021, exceeding analyst forecasts. When the stock market opened on Monday, investors reacted swiftly, seemingly unaffected by the company’s recall of 475,000 defective cars on December 30, 2021, and Tesla’s stock price jumped more than 13% at the close.
After falling below the $1 trillion mark last month, the company’s market value once again exceeded this milestone. As the CEO of Tesla, Musk holds approximately 15.6% of Tesla. In late December 2021, he sold nearly 3 million Tesla shares on the open market to pay for his tax bill for simultaneously exercising approximately 5.7 million stock options.
Musk tweeted in December last year that he will pay approximately $11 billion in taxes in 2021, which may make him one of the most tax-paying individuals in the history of the United States. He sold 15.7 million Tesla shares last year, with a total value of more than 16 billion U.S. dollars (before tax).
Earlier, Musk’s wealth growth was quite flat, until it began to surge in the last two years. His net worth has jumped by more than $200 billion in 2020 and 2021, of which it increased by $116 billion last year alone, setting a record for the highest annual income of all billionaires tracked by Forbes.
Later this month, Tesla will announce the fourth quarter of 2021 earnings, when Musk is expected to get another windfall. If Tesla can achieve specific operational and market value goals as analysts generally expect, Musk will receive millions of lucrative stock option awards, which may increase his wealth by billions of dollars.
Last year, Musk’s net worth reached 340 billion U.S. dollars, surpassing the peak of John D. Rockefeller’s net worth after adjusting for inflation, making him once the richest man in modern history. Overall, Tesla’s stock price has risen by 50% last year.