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Tesla Plunges After a Conference Call

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Re: Tesla Plunges After a Conference Call

#191

Post by JustSomeNobody »

3pt14159 wrote: post #136
nodesocket wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree about it being embarrassing and cringey. I appreciate his no-bs and no-fluff candor. Elon called out the press for writing misleading articles to generate clicks. He went as far as calling it irresponsible and dangerous. He also called out day-traders, saying of you can't handle volatility then sell your stock. "I am not here to convince you to buy Tesla stock." You can listen to the call at https://edge.med…

Yeah I agree with you nodesocket. Musk comes off as focusing on the right things, not getting bogged down by a x% difference on capital outlay here or there.

No, he comes off as someone who has to be the smartest person in the room and when he gets asked questions he doesn't know the answer to, he deflects. This is immature.

Re: Tesla Plunges After a Conference Call

#192

Post by danso »

nonbel wrote: post #165
bllguo wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's literally his job to talk to investors. He explicitly invited those questions, too. Obviously it would be boring to you as a layman with no money on the line. I'm sure I'd be bored too. That's not relevant though.

>"It's literally his job to talk to investors. He explicitly invited those questions, too." I totally agree, still in my experience they are quite boring. I'm not even advocating for any kind of change or anything, they are probably supposed to be boring. >"Obviously it would be boring to you as a layman with no money on the line." Why would you I assume I was listening to an earnings call without money on the line?…

Why do you have an expectation that a Q&A about financials should be emotionally exciting?

Re: Tesla Plunges After a Conference Call

#193

Post by xkjkls »

garmaine wrote: post #164
xkjkls wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not entirely true. He has duties to run the company in with good faith and care, but not necessarily to maximize shareholder value.

‘Good faith and care’ is typically understood by US courts to have a strong emphasis on ROI. But you’re right, it is a little bit of gray area, and can be made purposefully more complicated when, e.g., the prospectus puts other duties first. Google’s “we’re not a typical company and we don’t intend to become one” is a famous example. For benefit corporations are the extreme example of this.

Almost all lawsuits regarding the good faith clause involve some sort of corrupt practice that enriched the executives at the expense of the shareholders (in fact, Tesla is currently involved in a similar lawsuit regarding its purchase of Solar City). It would be near impossible to prove bad faith in choosing one business strategy vs. another if there wasn't some corrupt intent or incentive.

Re: Tesla Plunges After a Conference Call

#194

Post by matwood »

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.

> fiduciary duty to maximise shareholder value

This can be and has been widely interpreted. It does not have to mean maximizing profits to the exclusion of everything else.

Re: Tesla Plunges After a Conference Call

#195

Post by xkjkls »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #140
xkjkls wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The west coast bias in Hacker News is always shocking. The capital markets exist for a reason, and the people he's mocking on this conference call are the ones that he's going to need to be begging for billions if things don't deliver in Q3 or Q4.

It shoudn't shock you. It should be expected based on the demographics of the people who read HN.

Goldman Sachs has more developers than Facebook. It's not like Wall Street isn't filled with software people.

Re: Tesla Plunges After a Conference Call

#196

Post by mcguire »

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…

"God forbid a CEO do anything except try to drive the share price as high as humanly possible."

If he wants to maximize the amount of money he gets the next time he goes to the trough, while minimizing the dilution, then yes, he needs to drive the price up.

Re: Tesla Plunges After a Conference Call

#197

Post by cptskippy »

maxsilver wrote: post #52
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.

The important part of Musk's plan has already succeeded. He made electric cars cool and competitive. If Tesla folds tomorrow, there will still be a large market for electric cars, and multiple other companies serving that. Depending on your needs, that has arguably already happened. While Tesla is still the "coolest" brand of car, there are better/cheaper electric cars from many non-Tesla companies already widely ava…

If Tesla folds then my concern is that it would just be used as justification for shutting down EV programs as not viable.

Re: Tesla Plunges After a Conference Call

#198

Post by Silhouette »

nodesocket wrote: post #124
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…

Disagree about it being embarrassing and cringey. I appreciate his no-bs and no-fluff candor. Elon called out the press for writing misleading articles to generate clicks. He went as far as calling it irresponsible and dangerous. He also called out day-traders, saying of you can't handle volatility then sell your stock. "I am not here to convince you to buy Tesla stock." You can listen to the call at https://edge.med…

Elon called out the press for writing misleading articles to generate clicks. He went as far as calling it irresponsible and dangerous.

Elon Musk criticising others for making misleading statements to generate hype seems more than a little hypocritical, no?

Re: Tesla Plunges After a Conference Call

#199

Post by dragonwriter »

danso wrote: post #179
kneel wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla is a public company. Wall Street acts as a leaky pipe funneling money between investors and Tesla.

Wall Street sounds pretty terrible. So why isn't Tesla using a non-leaky money pipe?

> So why isn't Tesla using a non-leaky money pipe?

If such a thing existed that would bring in the amount of money to Tesla that it has needed, it would.

Re: Tesla Plunges After a Conference Call

#200

Post by jrochkind1 »

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…

If Musk has a way to keep investors happy without spending time on these calls, he doesn't appear to have deployed it yet. If he doesn't think keeping investors happy is necessary or part of his job, well I guess we'll find out.
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