Ross Gerber Highlights Meta's '$23.6 Billion' Share Buyback Cost, Warns TSLA Shareholders About Stock Compensation

Investor Ross Gerber of the investment firm Gerber Kawasaki has warned Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) investors of the potential ramifications of stock-based employee compensation, drawing parallels with Meta Platforms Inc.'s (NASDAQ:META) share buybacks.

A Real Cost

The investor took to the social media platform X on Monday, warning Tesla shareholders that stock compensation was a real cost for companies. "Tesla shareholders should pay attention to this regarding meta," he said, then shared a quote from an article by the Wall Street Journal that said the Mark Zuckerberg-led company spent close to $23.6 billion on "share buybacks to offset dilution."

Share buybacks can play a major role in stock valuation. Employees, when offered stock-based compensation, can affect the value of the stock as the number of shares issued increases, making existing shares less valuable.

Companies buying back shares can offset dilution concerns as it decreases the number of overall shares available on the market, leading to an increase in stock value. 

Tesla's Stock-Based Compensation, Pay Package

Tesla, according to an Electrek report from November last year, reserved close to 60 million shares as compensation for Tesla's employees, but also reserved 208 million shares for CEO Elon Musk.

However, Musk's trillion-dollar pay package, which was criticized by Gerber, who opined that the package could result in stock dilutions close to $275 million per day. If Musk hits all of the pay package's milestones, the billionaire could own over 423 million shares of the company, separate from the reported 206 million share reserve.

According to an SEC filing dated December 30, 2025, Musk owns over 519 million shares of the EV giant. Tesla currently has over 3.7 billion outstanding shares on the market.

The pay package includes performance-based compensation and includes certain milestones that Musk must hit with Tesla to earn the awards. Some milestones include 10 Million Active FSD Subscriptions, 20 million Tesla vehicle deliveries, as well as 1 million Optimus bots delivered and 1 million Robotaxis operating commercially.

Benzinga Edge Rankings show that Tesla scores well on the Momentum metric and offers a favorable price trend in the Long Term.

Price Action: TSLA slid 2.91% to $399.83 at Market close on Monday, and surged 0.19% to $400.57 during the overnight session.

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