MW How James Murdoch made more than $27 million on Tesla's stock - on paper
By Tomi Kilgore
Longtime board member acquired shares from exercising options at a below-market price not seen in years
Tesla Inc. board member James Murdoch just made a pretty penny, at least on paper, on the electric-vehicle giant's stock.
Murdoch, a Tesla board member since 2017, disclosed late Tuesday that he acquired 90,000 Tesla shares $(TSLA)$ on July 11 by exercising options at a price of $17.47 a share. (Murdoch's father is media mogul and News Corp $(NWS.AU)$ founder Rupert Murdoch. MarketWatch is owned by Dow Jones, which is a subsidiary of News Corp.)
The disclosure explained that the option award was granted as part of Tesla's equity-incentive plan and outside-director compensation policy.
Tesla's stock ran up 2.9% in morning trading, trading around $319.65.
If Murdoch were to sell the shares he just acquired, it would bring in about $28.77 million, or about $27.2 million more than the cost of the shares.
As of Tuesday, Murdoch had not filed to sell any of the shares he just acquired.
In Tesla's latest disclosed proxy statement, from April 2024, Murdoch had options for 1.27 million shares outstanding as of Dec. 31, 2023.
Monday's disclosure showed that Murdoch directly owned 90,000 shares after the exercise of options and indirectly owned a total of 884,306 shares through JRM Rev. Trust and Seven Hills Trust.
That stake, which represents only about 0.03% of the 3.22 billion Tesla shares outstanding, would be worth about $311.44 million.
-Tomi Kilgore
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
July 16, 2025 10:49 ET (14:49 GMT)
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