Quite recently, Tesla’s QI earnings slowed down with a less-than-expected share drop. Compared to the previous quarter, Tesla’s cash burn was faster in order to meet production targets, but the cash burn rate was slower than what was expected by the analysts.
It was anticipated after the bell on Wednesday that Tesla might run losses in the first quarter. Nevertheless, the investors were more concerned about the car Model 3’s progress, cash burn rate, and margins. And the future financial needs of the automotive company still remained open.
Elon Musk, the Tesla Chief Executive, stated his high production objective of rolling out 6,000 cars per week by the end of June, as per a leaked email to his employee, by running its Freemont, California factory round the clock, with more of overtimes and employee recruitment.
Shortly after Elon Musk changed his perspective to deal with the prospect of Tesla’s earnings, he faced severe social media backlash, primarily on Twitter, due to his odd behavior on an earnings conference call.
Musk turned to Twitter this Friday to defend his behavior that had caused a 5% dip in the share value of Tesla. Musk’s tweet stated, “The ‘dry’ questions were not asked by investors, but rather by two sell-side analysts trying to justify their Tesla short thesis. They are actually on the *opposite* side of investors. HyperChange represented actual investors, so I switched to them.”
Responding to a question about capital requirements on Sanford Bernstein’s Toni Sacconaghi while on a conference call this Wednesday, Musk stated, “Boring, bonehead questions are not cool, Next?”
Answering RBC’s Joseph Spak on the call regarding Model 3 reservations, Musk had said, “We’re going to go to YouTube. Sorry. These questions are so dry. They’re killing me.”
Although Musk marked both Sacconaghi and Spak as short sellers, the two actually have hold ratings on Tesla’s stock capital.
Next, Musk was asked many questions by Galileo Russell, a 25-year-old retail investor and owner of a YouTube Channel. Russell asked Musk on Twitter if he could be on the earnings call, which is generally meant only for investors, analysts, and occasionally, the media.
Musk’s failure to answer questions from the analysts about Tesla’s finances caused the stock to go down by 5.6 percent on Thursday. The investors and analysts claimed, pointing fingers at Musk, that the loss reduced their faith in Musk’s competency as the CEO of the company. Referring to the call and Musk’s behavior, Adam Jonas of Morgan Stanley stated that it was the most unusual call in his experience of 20 years of taking earnings conference calls.
On Thursday, Sacconaghi sharply criticized Musk on CNBC: “This is a financial analyst call, this is not a TED talk.”
Going by the string of Twitter exchanges between Musk and the investors and analysts, Musk continued to boldly defend his performance and his failure to respond to the questions from most of the analysts. Not giving in to the sharp criticism directed at him, Musk initiated a thread of why the questions asked by the analysts were not “valid.” The exchanges show that none of the two parties in the Twitter crossfire are willing to take a step back.
