A series of Tweets and blogs from Elon Musk last week confirmed that the billionaire has no intention to merge SpaceX with his electric car manufacturing unit Tesla.

While Tweets about ‘taking Tesla private’  created something of a storm with the Securities and Exchange Commission and the NASDAQ stock exchange – and led to a suspension in Tesla’s shares at one point – Musk stressed that Tesla and SpaceX would remain separate businesses.

SpaceX is a private company and has a reported value of some $28 billion. Musk’s Tweet that he would take Tesla private at $420 a share puts a value on the car company of some $70 – $80 billion.

Musk’s statement said: “My intention is for all Tesla employees to remain shareholders of the company, just as is the case at SpaceX. If we were to go private, employees would still be able to periodically sell their shares and exercise their options. This would enable you to still share in the growing value of the company that you have all worked so hard to build over time.”

“The intention is not to merge SpaceX and Tesla. They would continue to have separate ownership and governance structures. However, the structure envisioned for Tesla is similar in many ways to the SpaceX structure: external shareholders and employee shareholders have an opportunity to sell or buy approximately every six months,” he concluded.

Other posts by Chris Forrester:

1. Virgin Galactic in stock split
2. Thuraya-3 suffers major problem
3. AST SpaceMobile hit by Class Action
4. Optimism under threat at SES
5. Rivada visits Terran Orbital’s manufacturing HQ
6. Avanti wins spectrum debt obligation case
7. SpaceX breaks records for re-use launchers
8. IRIS2 already in trouble?
9. Intelsat contemplates next steps

Categories: Blogs, Business, Inside Satellite, M&A