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.

Comments

Still... a good interview.

[internet-redstar]

Still a good interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:Still... a good interview.

[rmdingler]

Still a good interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Agreed.

It must be very difficult for Elon to deal with the pressures of the business side of his genius; especially since he seems to be cursed with control issues, making it difficult for him to delegate tasks, including the appointment of another CEO or two at his flagship companies.

Has he made some miscalculations recently? Sure. Can he rebound from this? Certainly. It's simply clear he has to prioritize time for what he's great at (inspiration and innovation) and learn to hand off to others what he can afford to delegate (daily business stress and decisions).

Personally, I hope he gets it together... there is a worldwide scarcity of visionaries who stand to make the earth a better place.

Re:Still... a good interview.

[Rei]

It actually was. And anyone criticizing it for the "OMG Elon Is A Pothead Promoting Drug Usage!" notion clearly never watched it. It's practically an anti-pot ad. Musk is offered a joint (which he has to ask if it's a joint), takes one puff, doesn't even inhale, looks at it, shakes his head no, passes it back - then later on they discuss marijuana, and Musk says that he doesn't like it because it inhibits his ability to get things done and have a meaningful effect on the world.

But of course, that doesn't make for a clickbait headline, now does it?

Seriously, this Slashdot "summary" is one of the clickbatiest, most misleading summaries I've seen in ages. Also poorly copyedited - starting to talk about marijuana, then acting like it's going into a summary about pot, but instead going back to Morton. Naturally, their quoting of Morton cuts out before his line, "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 its financial reporting." - because, hey, why bother to mention a trivial thing like that when you have a hit piece to right?

And of course, there's no mention of the in-detail reporting on why Morton left. Specifically, Morton was brought in because his background was privatizations. But he felt like nobody appreciated his ideas as Tesla and he was being ignored. His ignored ideas included, and I quote, "advice about capitalizing the company through other means rather than going private". Had Morton bothered to listen to a single earnings call, they would have heard the Tesla executive team repeatedly and strongly ruling out capital raises from equity; instead that their capital expenditures going forth are to be from profit and debt. He seems to have misunderstood that privatization wasn't a means, it was a goal: to eliminate short-sellers, and thus the financial incentive to FUD the company - as well as to eliminate the end-of-quarter rush and allow the company to stay more long-term strategically focused.

By the way, as for executives leaving in general: Tesla has 23 people at the VP level or higher - we're not even counting department heads here. The average stay of a high level executive is around 4 years, and less in Silicon Valley. Executive departures will happen. Get used to it.

Of course, Slashdot concludes with a paragraph that is an epic smear, curiously sourced from some random person commenting on some other site's message board (is that a first here?):

It's now obvious that everything Elon tweeted that manipulated the market was a lie.

Meanwhile, in the universe that we live in, there were multiple entities competing to buy Tesla. Including, among others, multiple sovereign wealth funds (not just the Saudis), and Volkswagen. The terms however were more painful to Tesla than staying public, including various combinations of loss of control, requirements to build large local production facilities and so forth. It also became clear that the best their advisers could do for allowing retail investors to remain in (which was part of the plan, to minimize the size of the buyout) was an exotic trust structure that would have had a low chance of being approved by regulators.

But naaaaaah - who cares about actual investigative reporting when you can base articles on "Megatrex from the comment section of Ars Technica"? FUD away everyone! It's a lot more fun!

Re:Still... a good interview.

[gl4ss]

smoking the weed has nothing to do with being years late from profitability. you can only run a company only on your public image for so long. only tweet extravagant ideas lifted from ancient popular mechanics for so long.

the stock tanked due to persons privvy to the books running out like the house was on fire. the big thing people want and need to know out of those books is if they're getting money into the company from making and selling the model 3's. that they don't sell the cheapo model because it wouldn't make money doesn't really put that much confidence into it.

anyhow, for some funnies you can watch some investment advice youtube channels from few days back.

the cars are good/okay yes - but whats that got to do with the company making money or not?

Re:Eagerly Awaiting

[Zero__Kelvin]

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.

Re:The end is nigh.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

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?

Re:By Neruos

[Rei]

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?

Re:Who cares.. Seriously?

[msauve]

"hen the stock hits $4000 as it is expected to do."

That's after the 420:1 reverse split.