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Tesla Plunges After a Conference Call

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Re: Tesla Plunges After a Conference Call

#151

Post by ergothus »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #18
mephitix wrote: post #5

I was on this call. It was extremely cringey/embarrassing to hear Elon dismiss valid questions. At the same time, it was fantastic to see a young, smart, retail investor (Gali from Hyperchange) get to ask so many questions directly to the leadership team. I thought before the call that Gali would get to ask only one question, like the other analysts. He was able to ask almost 10! It was surreal. I was left feeling th…

"Sacconaghi pressed ahead with another query about Tesla lowering its 2018 capital expenditure projection to $3 billion, from $3.4 billion. Ahuja said the carmaker would spend less by simplifying its approach to automation and curtailing infrastructure outlays. 'And so where specifically will you be in terms of capital requirements?' Sacconaghi said. 'Excuse me. Next. Next,' Musk said to the call operator. 'Boring, b…

I recall reading an interview with musk on wait but why (edit: https://waitbutwhy.com/2017/03/elon-musk-post-series.html ) where the interview mentioned researching musks intolerance for "boring" questions and even trolled him a bit.

Obviously the appropriateness is different, but this is not new behavior. Anyone trying to draw conclusions about the state of tesla from his behavior here is probably making mistakes (or at least using bad data) unless they thought the same BEFORE this call.

Re: Tesla Plunges After a Conference Call

#152

Post by mephitix »

greglindahl wrote: post #108
debt wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I concur. The kind of numbers they're talking about are no joke. Investors immediately responded to Elon's hubris in kind by severely punishing the stock. Seems the joke is on Musk.

How did you figure out that the reason the stock fell was this particular one? (Edit: "Elon's hubris" in particular) Stock programs have all kinds of explanations they give out as to why a stock moves. Usually, it's a guess.

I had the Google stock chart open while the call was running. It was pretty much night and day. Before the call, it was up by about 0.25%. Then after market, during the call it was hovering between 1% and -1% - then immediately after the dismissal it started dropping quickly.

Re: Tesla Plunges After a Conference Call

#153

Post by wgerard »

ericmcer wrote: post #112
tensor wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the sake of society, I hope Musk succeeds. We've spent too much time as a culture celebrating fairly useless achievements and being unwilling to dare to do the things that will truly take us forward.

Its inspiring to see him but it's also ridiculous that Elon Musk is the one pushing the space and auto industries forward. I really hope he succeeds, but it is just stupid that our hopes for scientific and technological advancement have shifted to the private sector. The private sector has historically been the one that had sane and logical business practices minimizing risk, while government had the funding necessar…

> The private sector has historically been the one that had sane and logical business practices minimizing risk, while government had the funding necessary to take on large, risky projects for the good of their constituents

I'm not a "free market trumps all" person by any means, but is this really true? Xerox PARC, GE, IBM, Ford all come to mind. Sure, still the government was involved in quite a few of these, but I wouldn't say these companies were minimizing risk by any means.

Re: Tesla Plunges After a Conference Call

#154

Post by xkjkls »

mmsimanga wrote: post #75
tensor wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the sake of society, I hope Musk succeeds. We've spent too much time as a culture celebrating fairly useless achievements and being unwilling to dare to do the things that will truly take us forward.

Agreed. At this moment on HN front page we have Musk story and the Fake It Till You Make It story[1]. Illustrates the different ways of achieving success in the modern world. I prefer the Musk way. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16986701

I think a lot of Musk's critics would consider Tesla the poster child of "fake it till you make it".

Re: Tesla Plunges After a Conference Call

#155

Post by mcguire »

kneel wrote: post #72
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> he's Elon Musk and he doesn't care about investor returns Then he shouldn't be the CEO of a public company which continues to sell stock and debt to investors on the promise of a return. Also, Elon Musk very much does care about returns. He has a great track record in that department. He's just learned it's not something that's healthy to focus on in the short-term. Unfortunately, running out of cash forces the com…

I think what he did is awesome. Who cares what wall street thinks? They're mostly a bunch of leeches passing around paper and overreacting to news articles. Tesla will be fine.

According to Investopedia, Musk is worth $20B. As a first-order estimate, at last year's spend rate, he could fund Tesla for 10 years. But, those leaches are why he's worth $20B and the results of this call probably lopped a goodly chunk out of that $20B.

Tesla may not be fine. One ought not to go out of one's way to bite the hand that feeds one.

Re: Tesla Plunges After a Conference Call

#157

Post by Luc »

zmk_ wrote: post #125
rawrmaan wrote: post #50

Elon has always seemed to have the attitude of "not everyone should invest in this stock". I find this refreshing. God forbid a CEO do anything except try to drive the share price as high as humanly possible. I don't know if this carries the same weight in a public company, but setting expectations with investors is super important in a startup and prevents a ton of wasted time wrangling investors who don't get the t…

Actually as a CEO he has a fiduciary duty to maximise shareholder value.

Not at all true in the US. See: Supreme Court Hobby Lobby case.

Re: Tesla Plunges After a Conference Call

#158

Post by jacquesm »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #36
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Sacconaghi pressed ahead with another query about Tesla lowering its 2018 capital expenditure projection to $3 billion, from $3.4 billion. Ahuja said the carmaker would spend less by simplifying its approach to automation and curtailing infrastructure outlays. 'And so where specifically will you be in terms of capital requirements?' Sacconaghi said. 'Excuse me. Next. Next,' Musk said to the call operator. 'Boring, b…

I'm not defending Elon's behavior here, but speaking more generally: if you're in a place where you need to maintain maximum productivity for a while, because a deadline has slipped for example, meetings can turn into a massive time sink if you don't act like a total nazi during them. In so many meetings, people just want to hear themselves talk, whether to offer some opinion, reiterate some point, or ask some useles…

It's the second time in a short while that he shows he does not want to run the company like it is a public company. But he does want access to that capital. Those two don't mesh.

Re: Tesla Plunges After a Conference Call

#159

Post by ceejayoz »

garmaine wrote: post #146
zmk_ wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually as a CEO he has a fiduciary duty to maximise shareholder value.

I’m not sure why you are down voted... that is his legal obligation.

That's a commonly held myth.

https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-co...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/09/09/how-t...

https://medium.com/bull-market/there-is-no-effective-fiducia...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiduciary#Fiduciary_duties_und...

Re: Tesla Plunges After a Conference Call

#160

Post by supernovae »

Nokinside wrote: post #60
mmsimanga wrote: post #40

Having watched clip in the article and given I don't have any Tesla stock. Additionally having been an operations manager I have some sympathy for Musk. Every Tom, Dick, and Sally has an opinion but very few have the know-how to help. But in today's world who needs to be an expert to comment or pass judgment. On the one hand we have CEOs who chase the quarterly earnings at the cost of long-term sustainability. Musk s…

Firstly, this was not some PR event. Musk had large number of people knew what they were talking about wanting to ask tough questions. What Musk is interested in is not relevant. Secondly, Musk can't avoid short term investor questions because unless he answers them, there may be no longer term. This kind of clear avoidance of difficult questions can easily add one percentage point to Tesla's future loans and reduce…

Investing is what we make of it. The reality is for everyone but the top 1%, investing is long term. It's tied into 401ks, it tied into RSU, its tied into Options unless you're the top 1% in which case the only benefit of short-term markets is the ability to manipulate them for your own benefit. Many CEO's know this and Tesla isn't the only company that faces this problem. Amazon has to think long-term, many tech companies have to think long term. Trying to get an entire industry/society to move forward or make systematic changes is a LONG TERM proposition.

sure, we can day trade or buy stocks and sell whenever we want, but we're not the ones causing market swings, we're positions in computational modeling where the market makers aren't even offering our positions to the market but using your sell to do another buy and make money off us reacting/acting on the market.

The end result is still that Tesla seeks a profit - but its business goal is to change the market. If you don't like that, don't buy the stock.

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