Panasonic divested itself of its entire stake in Tesla

Panasonic has sold its entire stake in Tesla, writes the Financial Times. The company will spend the proceeds of $3.6 billion on a key takeover.

The sale of the stake will not affect Panasonic and Tesla's cooperation in the production of battery cells at the JV companies' gigafactory in Nevada, the Japanese company announced, the project is valued at $5 billion.

This is not entirely true, the FT notes : shortly before the sale, Panasonic said that it intended to reduce excessive dependence on Tesla and sell elements to other electric vehicle manufacturers. Panasonic started out as a sole supplier, but Tesla has since partnered with LG Chem and CATL before announcing plans to make its own parts. The gigafactory began to bring profit to the Japanese only in the last year.

But investments in Tesla shares paid off by orders of magnitude. Panasonic bought 1.4 million shares of Tesla in 2010 for $21.15 for $30 million. As of March 2020, the stake was already worth $750 million, and its valuation increased sixfold the following year. There was a situation when Panasonic began to cost 23 times cheaper than Tesla, and its stake in Elon Musk's company at the date of sale (in March 2021) approached the cost of a sixth of its own capitalization.

Panasonic will invest the proceeds in a costly takeover of US supply chain software provider Blue Youunder for $7.1 billion. Considering the Japanese company's consistently poor experience in this area, experts do not expect a quick return on it.