Rear Window

Denholm plans $80m Tesla windfall

Myriam Robin and Mark Di Stefano

Updated Jan 30, 2024 – 6.07pm, first published at 5.56pm

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Chairing the board of Tesla was supposed to make Robyn Denholm exceedingly rich. It certainly has. But not lately.

The calendar year just gone was a particularly patchy one for the one-time Telstra executive. Quite aside from Elon Musk’s antics keeping her board’s decision-making in the headlines (the American ones probably give her more heartburn than those here), she didn’t sell a single share in 2023.

Nor was she paid a cent of her $US300,000 ($454,758) salary, fulfilling the terms of a settlement of a case in which a large shareholder accused the Tesla board of having unfairly and excessively compensated themselves (you don’t say...).

Robyn Denholm: still making bank, but less than she might be used to. Olive + Maeve

But life, perhaps, is looking up. In an SEC filing released on Monday (Tuesday AEDT), Tesla revealed that Denholm had entered into an automated trading plan to offload 281,116 shares, “subject to conditions”, and covering stock options expiring on August 16.

At current prices, that’s a potential $US53 million windfall, or $80 million in the generally Sydney-based Denholm’s local currency.

But the whole calculation is shrouded in uncertainty: any falls in Tesla’s share price could render it unprofitable for Denholm to convert the options, which will grant her the ordinary shares she plans to sell, while any rises would increase her windfall.

In years when Denholm has been able to sell, we’ve found it far more satisfying to count backwards. Denholm made $85 million selling Tesla stock in 2022, a staggering $170 million as Tesla’s share price ballooned in 2021, and $134 million the year before that. This year’s plan looks positively modest in comparison. And for Musk, it would never do.

This month, he put a gun to the board’s head, thinking aloud that he was “uncomfortable” working on AI and robotics for the firm unless his voting stake was upped to 25 per cent. This as demand for Tesla’s vehicles shrunk, along with its share price.

And for managing (or indulging) an ego like that, Denholm gets to keep building her fortune, to be peppered across prestige real estate and vegan leather start-ups, for decades to come. Outstanding.

Myriam Robin is Rear Window editor based in the Melbourne newsroom. A Rear Window columnist since 2017, she previously reported on financial markets and media. Connect with Myriam on Twitter. Email Myriam at myriam.robin@afr.com

Mark Di Stefano is Rear Window columnist, based in the Sydney newsroom. He previously worked at BuzzFeed, the Financial Times and The Information before joining the Financial Review as a media and tech correspondent. Connect with Mark on Twitter. Email Mark at mark.distefano@afr.com