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Elon Musk is on the verge of becoming the world’s fifth centibillionaire.
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Elon Musk is on the verge of breaking his twelfth digit. Shares of his electric carmaker Tesla jumped 3.75% on Thursday, boosting Musk’s net worth by $3.2 billion, to $98.8 billion—just $1.2 billion away from making Musk the fifth centibillionaire in the world.
He is the world’s fifth-richest person, according to Forbes’ real-time ranking, clocking in ahead of the Oracle of Omaha Warren Buffett and behind Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg.
Musk’s fortune has quadrupled since mid-March, when he ranked No. 31 on Forbes’ World’s Billionaires list with a net worth of $24.6 billion. He owns 21% of the $416 billion (market cap) company but has pledged more than half his stake as collateral for personal loans; Forbes applies a discount to his pledged shares to account for the loans.
Tesla stock will split on a 5-for-1 basis on Friday after the market close and start trading on a split-adjusted basis on Monday. Shares have risen 35% since Tesla announced the move on August 11.
Analysts are divided on Tesla’s meteoric rise. Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi called the company’s valuation “mind-boggling” in late July. “Despite our relatively bullish stance on electric vehicle evolution, and structural advantages we believe Tesla may hold, we find it difficult to justify Tesla’s current valuation even under our most bullish/imaginative scenarios,” Sacconaghi wrote in a research note. He also warned that the Chinese government could retaliate against Tesla and other American tech companies over President Trump’s TikTok ban.
Wedbush’s Dan Ives, who recently upgraded his price target to $3,000 a share, contends that Tesla will keep soaring. “We still think bright days are ahead for Tesla,” Ives told Bloomberg last week. “Despite the haters who continue to scratch their heads, the stock moves higher.”
Musk has received two enormous stock option grants this year, worth $6.4 billion, as part of his compensation package. A third is on the way if Tesla maintains a six-month average market capitalization of $200 billion, and posts either $35 billion of revenue or $3 billion of adjusted EBITDA for this quarter.