Al Root

Tesla stock was falling early Monday. The electric-vehicle maker has a new board member for investors to get to know.

Shares of the electric vehicle maker were 4% down at $335.86, while S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average futures were 1% and 0.5% lower, respectively.

Tesla appointed retired Chipotle Mexican Grill CFO Jack Hartung to the board of directors on Friday. He will serve on the audit committee and his appointment is effective on June 1.

Hartung spent a quarter-century at Chipotle, starting when the restaurant chain had less than 200 stores. Today, Chipotle has more than 3,700 locations.

The move, for now, expands Tesla's board to nine. The other members are board chair Robyn Denholm, Ira Ehrenpreis, Joe Gebbia, James Murdoch, Elon Musk's brother Kimbal Musk, J.B. Straubel, Kathleen Wilson-Thompson, and of course, Elon Musk.

Tesla also included the disclosure that a son-in-law of Hartung has been a "non-executive, salaried employee of Tesla since December 2016, and does not share a household with Mr. Hartung."

Expansion of the board with outside finance experience will likely be seen as a positive for the company, although board members don't typically move stocks. That's up to management.

Coming into Monday trading, Tesla stock was down about 13% year to date, about 12 percentage points behind the S&P 500.

Write to Al Root at allen.root@dowjones.com

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May 19, 2025 09:07 ET (13:07 GMT)

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