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Tesla Stock Plunges After Senior Execs Leave, Musk Smokes Weed During Interview (arstechnica.com)
Today, we have learned that two executives have left Tesla. According to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Tesla's newly hired chief accounting officer Dave Morton decided to resign because "the level of public attention placed on the company as well as the pace within the company have exceeded [his] expectations." He added: "I want to be clear that I believe strongly in Tesla, its mission, and its future prospects, and I have no disagreements with Tesla's leadership or financial reporting." Tesla's human resources chief Gaby Toledano also announced that should would be leaving the company after taking a leave of absence last month. CEO Elon Musk wrote that Toledo "has been on leave for a few months to spend more time with her family and has decided to continue doing so for personal reasons. She's been amazing and I'm very grateful for everything she's done for Tesla."
These departures certainly have had an impact on Tesla's stock, which is down more than six percent to $262, but an interview Elon Musk conducted with Joe Rogan may have caused the most damage. While discussing a wide range of topics including his tweeting behavior, his Boring Company's flamethrowers, and "neuralink" devices, the Tesla CEO openly smoked a mixed tobacco and marijuana cigarette, sending the internet into a frenzy. Ars Technica reports: Morton joined Tesla on August 6, one day before Musk's infamous tweet claiming that he had "funding secured" to take Tesla private. Musk was forced to abandon the plan a couple of weeks later. Not only did Musk not have any kind of written funding deal, many Tesla investors saw little upside in approving a deal that would reduce Tesla's transparency and the liquidity of Tesla stock. Morton didn't explicitly mention last month's buyout saga in his statement explaining his departure. But a lot of the "public attention" Tesla received during Morton's brief tenure was focused on the possibility of Tesla going private. It's safe to assume that members of Tesla's finance team were working overtime on issues related to the proposal during Morton's month at Tesla. It's worth noting that marijuana is legal in California (and several other states) if you are 21 or older, but the federal government still strictly prohibits the Schedule 1 substance.
UPDATE: You can watch/listen to the nearly three-hour-long interview here. Rogan manages to pick Musk's brain in great detail and in a refreshingly laid-back manner. We highly recommend a listen if you want to learn more about Musk's ambitions and thought process.
These departures certainly have had an impact on Tesla's stock, which is down more than six percent to $262, but an interview Elon Musk conducted with Joe Rogan may have caused the most damage. While discussing a wide range of topics including his tweeting behavior, his Boring Company's flamethrowers, and "neuralink" devices, the Tesla CEO openly smoked a mixed tobacco and marijuana cigarette, sending the internet into a frenzy. Ars Technica reports: Morton joined Tesla on August 6, one day before Musk's infamous tweet claiming that he had "funding secured" to take Tesla private. Musk was forced to abandon the plan a couple of weeks later. Not only did Musk not have any kind of written funding deal, many Tesla investors saw little upside in approving a deal that would reduce Tesla's transparency and the liquidity of Tesla stock. Morton didn't explicitly mention last month's buyout saga in his statement explaining his departure. But a lot of the "public attention" Tesla received during Morton's brief tenure was focused on the possibility of Tesla going private. It's safe to assume that members of Tesla's finance team were working overtime on issues related to the proposal during Morton's month at Tesla. It's worth noting that marijuana is legal in California (and several other states) if you are 21 or older, but the federal government still strictly prohibits the Schedule 1 substance.
UPDATE: You can watch/listen to the nearly three-hour-long interview here. Rogan manages to pick Musk's brain in great detail and in a refreshingly laid-back manner. We highly recommend a listen if you want to learn more about Musk's ambitions and thought process.
Still a good interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Besides the stockowners who sold enough stock to make the share price drop 6%+...
The stock will bounce back and those that sold based on their perception will kick themselves eventually, just like those that sold their stock in Nike.
No sig for you! Come back one year!
Should would be leaving the company.
If you don't read your own stuff why should we?
AstroTurf somewhere else. The “most damaging” thing has nothing to do with pot. We have a “blue chip” stock that is run like a startup.
Actually he took one hit, said he didn't like it, never got high, and stated that he didn't feel it would be conducive to productivity. Everyone making a big issue of this is an idiot, especially the two idiots that stepped down over it.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Watch the stock sink even quicker for Telsa and go bust by the end of this year?
Or watch the stock dive 'way down, watch Elon buy much of it up with the money he's already cashed out, and end up with a LOT less of the company owned by others.
Is he crazy like The Mad Hatter, or like a fox?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Nobody stepped down over it. Morton left because he was a privatization expert for a company no longer looking at going private, and felt nobody cared about his privatization ideas anyway. Toledano has been on a leave of absence for over a month. The fun thing about Toledano is that people got to FUD Tesla twice - once when she went on leave, and again when it was confirmed that she wouldn't be returning. Two for one - what a deal!
Even if you assume that her "personal reasons" and "family" is PR speak (and not literally what it says on the tin), the simple matter is that - as a company which has nearly two dozen people at the VP level or higher (not even counting department heads) - executive departures will happen at regular intervals. Just like they do at all companies (but particularly in Silicon Valley, where average executive stays are shorter than average). The main difference is that people don't have a giant FUD blitz every time, say, some VP in Kraft Foods leaves.
They carry weapons and they know if you've been bad or good. Not everybody's good, but everyone tries.
Model 3 does not use 18650s ("laptop batteries"), it uses 2170s. And S & X's 18650s, while a standard format, have a chemistry and structure engineered for battery packs, on a line that only produces them for the S & X.
SpaceX has taken over the lion's share of the entire planet's commercial launch industry. But "meh", right?
They carry weapons and they know if you've been bad or good. Not everybody's good, but everyone tries.
Sometimes I don't know if you shorts get things wrong through deliberate FUD, or just a really bad game of telephone. Because your (incorrect) initial rumour was "The Air Force is considering revoking Musk's security clearance", but that's apparently already morphed to "has just revoked his security clearance and canceled all contracts". The latter BTW having nothing to do with Musk's security clearance regardless.
But for those who actually care? Even the initial claim was wrong. "Reports that Musk security clearance under review are inaccurate: U.S. Air Force".
They carry weapons and they know if you've been bad or good. Not everybody's good, but everyone tries.
Yeah, plus Morton was known as a job hopper. He only worked 23 years at his last job at Seagate (a public company). He just took another job at a pre-IPO company today. I don't know why he didn't stick around. TSLA is going to $4000 and his options would have been worth billions. I guess he just isn't interested in money.
They are a re-purposing of laptop batteries.
That's a bit of an oversimplification.
The "innovation" was in being the first to using Lithium Ion batteries in a production car.
To me, Tesla is pretty much exactly like Apple. They take already mature technologies and integrate in a unique and aesthetically pleasing ways, and cultivate cult-like followings using their dear leader's charisma.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
I use my Bitcoin profits to buy Tesla stock.
I suppose you would call Richard Feynman a failure as a physicist as well? I bet you never even tried it. Just because your siblings are losers doesn't automatically imply other people who smoke weed are in the same category. I'd say Musk is doing a pretty fucking amazing job of changing the world around him.
And seriously so. I do hope Space-X survives, space-tech has been stagnant for far too long.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
People are pulling out of the market because Elon lies to manipulate shareholders and cost them billions and that has become even more obvious.
I don't have any reason to support Musk, but when flaming him let's at least get it right.
What he's being investigated for is not alleged lying to cost stockholders billions.
What he's being investigated for is alleged lying to cost stock traders - possibly stock manipulators, billions. Stock traders and hypothetical manipulators who DIDN'T own any stock, BORROWED and SOLD a bunch in the expectation that it would drop, some of whom apparently hired, through cutouts, a bunch of trolls to talk the stock down.
So when he said (unfortunately for him, without cutouts) that they might be going private and the stock shot up, the people who sold the borrowed stock were stuck having to buy some back at a HIGHER price than they sold it for (which is what you risk if you sell a stock short), but the people who actually owned it were just fine.
So the shorts closed out some short positions and took a big loss. Then, since Musk said that in a way that COULD be traced to him, they were able to sue him for the losses and complain to the SEC, getting it to start an investigation. THEN the stock DID start to tank, and the people who owned it DID take a loss.
But I wonder: Did the shorts actually close out all their short positions? Or are they still net short on Tesla - especially if you count, not just their direct holdings, but also all the investments of the web of companies and financial instruments in which they hold some interest?
Seems to me that, if they still have a short position, getting an SEC investigation going and/or announcing and filing a suit for billions would be just the sort of manipulation that they are claiming Musk was up to. Hold a short, file a suit, talk it up. Maybe switch to long and then settle and announce the settlement. And so on. (Always through cutouts, of course.)
IMHO anybody who sues over stock manipulation should have no net position (outside of a truly blind trust) in the stocks or other financial instruments whose performance might be affected by news of the suit and/or its progress.
A good move for Musk might be to investigate the plaintiffs, see if they might have had a net short position when they filed and/or announced their suit and/or complaint, whether they profited by it, and if so counter-sue, get it on record, and maybe not just get out from under but suck a few more billion out of them and into the company. (This would also establish the precedent of "gotta divest before you sue or you're manipulating", if it isn't there already. I am not a financial type or a lawyer.)
In the interest of full disclosure:
- I have no direct financial position, short, long, bond, etc. in Tesla (or other Musk enterprises).
- I don't know if any of the funds in my retirement plans might have a position ditto.
- As far as I know, neither my company nor any in which I have a financial interest (again, outside of any retirement plan funds), are currently engaged in any business or other relationship with Tesla, etc.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
They are. But so far, the company has benefited from tax breaks and subsidies and never operated in a competitive environment. It's questionable whether they will actually be able to deliver a competitive product once the subsidies go away and these technologies become mainstream.
Musk: "I'd like to introduce the two newest members of our Tesla leadership team, Mr. Marin and Mr. Chong."
Watch the stock sink even quicker for Telsa and go bust by the end of this year?
Or watch the stock dive 'way down, watch Elon buy much of it up with the money he's already cashed out, and end up with a LOT less of the company owned by others.
Is he crazy like The Mad Hatter, or like a fox?
1. Cash out when the price is high.
2. Start acting erratically and tank the value of the stock.
3. Buy back in at the much lower price.
4. Go to prison because that sounds REALLY sketchy and probably illegal.
I stole this Sig
$4,000 / would be sixteen times the size of the largest car companies in the world.
Here's the reality:
Volkwagen revenue S$268 billion
Toyota revenue $261 billion
Daimler revenue $164 billion
General Motors revenue $146 billion
Toyota revenue $138 billion
Telsa revenue $11 billion
Tesla would need to grow ten times larger just to become a significant car company (though still not in the top 5). If they are phenemonally successful, it will justify a stock price of $80.
Morton left because he was a privatization expert for a company no longer looking at going private, and felt nobody cared about his privatization ideas anyway.
Although the above underlined sentence above contains ideas mentioned in the article, the summary doesn't reflect what the author wrote and instead conveys a meaning that is very different from the article.
From the article: "Morton, who left his role as Seagate's CFO to join Tesla, was not flustered by the tweet [about privatization] and met with Musk to go over various details that would make a take-private difficult. He brought up specific details such as equity change of control provisions and potential step-ups in the value of Tesla's debt associated with a new controlling shareholder. Musk and other executives didn't seem to care about the various financial obstacles, which concerned Morton."
Then only after all this, "When Morton offered advice about capitalizing the company through other means rather than going private, he was ignored."
These missing parts paint a very different picture of the reason for Morton's departure. From the article, Morton is painted much more positively and Musk and Tesla in a much less positive light.
Look dude, it's clear you're a true believer-- I don't know what degree to which the things you're saying are deliberate spin, and what aren't. I am neither long nor short TSLA (am investigating perhaps buying convertible notes & hedging with shorting the stock, but that would be a mostly-long position).
1. David Morton wasn't brought in to take TSLA private-- or shouldn't have been, as that's not his expertise. Sure, he did a transaction like that as a junior financial executive-- 16 years ago, but has been a CFO of a public company for the past 3 years and now went to Anaplan which is working on going public. It's believed that he was being positioned to take the reins as TSLA's CFO before his departure. I can sure understand shitting a brick and polishing your resume if you go somewhere to be a public CFO, and your first day, the chairman/CEO tweets about privatization without talking to you.
2. It's never good, with this degree of scrutiny, to do the kind of stupid shit that has gone down the past month.
3. TSLA needs more capital. It is difficult to fund significant growth from operations, and practically impossible with TSLA's degree of debt loading. While it may be possible to survive Q1's debt payment requirements (or even rally the stock and convert the notes), that doesn't leave extensive funds for capital expansion.
That said, with TSLA's prior capitalization it should have been easy to get funding from a small (in share) equity round-- if stupid shit stops capital markets should open back up.
4. TSLA's valuation is predicated, even now, on making it through this challenging time and significantly growing and maintaining market share. This is never good if you have many market entrants who are willing to sell product at a loss (for regulatory compliance reasons). This is never good if other participants are willing, nay practically required, to enter the market and sell below cost and have greater access to subsidies and favorable trade terms than you.
TSLA has a better product and has an initial lead in share and a positive brand reputation. In a growing market, that's a wonderful position to be in. But success is predicated on strong execution, access to capital, and not doing stupid stuff.
yeah the correct answer is "yeah, so?"
you think he didn't know the brass was leaving? now he can blame the stock drop on this and up play this while the situation cools down.
the real questions are: is model 3 profitable? why nobody wants to sign off on your bookkeeping shenigans? have you learn't anything about using twitter as an official way to communicate news that affect stock price, since you're banning people?
do you know how big of a crock it was to just casually announce all stocks being worth 420 - and now they're sub 300?
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
"But so far, the company has benefited from tax breaks and subsidies and never operated in a competitive environment."
The same tax breaks were available to the competition, you know, GM and Nissan? Who have both been producing EVs which compete with Tesla's vehicles? Who in fact have the most-sold EVs in the USA?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The second line that says Toyota should say Honda, I believe