Since its early Silicon Valley startup days, Panasonic, which supplied Tesla with lithium-ion batteries for its battery packs, has reportedly sold its entire stake in Elon Musk’s electric vehicle company. However, the company says that their business relationship will not change.
According to Nikkei Asia, the Osaka-based electronics company sold its Tesla shares in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2021. The sales of securities were likely responsible for a large portion of the $3.9billion Panasonic reported in its annual filings as “proceeds of sale and redemption of investment” and which will be used to finance new investments, Nikkei stated.
Around the time of Tesla’s June 2010 IPO, Panasonic purchased 1.4 million shares for $21.15 each. According to the company, its stake was valued at $730 million as of March 2020. This is before Tesla’s 5-to-1 stock split last January and massive price rise throughout 2020. If it hadn’t sold shares, Panasonic’s stake in the company would have been $4.6 billion.
Tesla did not respond to our request for comment.
Panasonic was a valuable partner, along with Toyota and Daimler. Both carmakers invested in and collaborated with Tesla during its early years. In Toyota’s case, they sold a large assembly plant. In the case of Toyota, Panasonic also contributed to that success. It provided ever more lithium-ion batteries for Tesla cars and worked closely with Tesla engineers to improve the chemistry of the cells to make them suitable for high-powered electric vehicles. Panasonic works with Tesla at its Gigafactory, Sparks, Nevada. It previously manufactured solar power products at the carmaker’s Buffalo, New York, plant before closing its operations there in summer 2020.
Panasonic plans to continue providing cells for Musk’s company and is currently working with Musk on a next-generation of batteries. According to Nikkei, a Panasonic executive said that “our relationship with Tesla as business partners will not change going ahead.”
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