Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tesla Plunges After a Conference Call

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 414 posts

Re: Tesla Plunges After a Conference Call

#241

Post by mephitix »

s2g wrote: post #91
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…

It was fantastic to watch him use Gali as a PR tool while he dodged real questions?

Perspective. Listening to a retail investor who never gets a seat at the table get to ask so many questions was a good thing - for Gali.

I can be cynical too and look at it as a PR stunt - in many ways it was given that he allowed Gali to ask almost 10 questions - but at the end of the day I was thinking - good for that guy.

Re: Tesla Plunges After a Conference Call

#242

Post by jaggederest »

danso wrote: post #150
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…

Jeffrey Skilling had the same approach too. In fact, he was even bolder than Musk because he not only evaded an obviously mean-spirited question, but he called out the investor as an "asshole". You can listen to the excerpt at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSK0v0vTgXA

Maybe the CEO of Enron currently serving a prison sentence is not an ideal role model.

Re: Tesla Plunges After a Conference Call

#243

Post by mr_spothawk »

jacquesm wrote: post #158
thaumaturgy wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

I think that Matt Levine (bloomberg) might suggest there's more & easier money to be had in the private market, anyway (see Uber, pre-IPO Spotify, etc...).

The problem for Musk, if he also shares that view, is that taking the company private seems (to me) like an impossibility at this point.

Re: Tesla Plunges After a Conference Call

#245

Post by staunch »

bllguo wrote: post #110
staunch wrote: post #65

Wall Street and their car industry friends want to kill Tesla. They use every opportunity. They probably pay "PR" firms to do anti-Tesla propaganda, judging from the shill YouTube comments I've seen. None of it matters if Tesla produces products that people love. So far they're doing a great job of that. If they keep up the "pace of innovation" they will succeed, and if they don't, they will fail. None of this drama…

You've clearly wrapped up way too much of your identity in Musk. If you actually care about his enterprises you should care about their financial sustainability. Want to kill Tesla? Do you understand who he was talking to? These people are Tesla investors . Well, maybe that should be "were" now.

Your ad hominem attack is against the guidelines of Hacker News.

I simply believe that founders, products, and teams determine success and that investor happiness is a lagging indicator. This is clearly what Elon Musk believes too.

Wall Street investors are like sheep. You can curse at them all you want. They can bleat all they want. They'll still come running when the food is ready.

Believing investors could be loyal to Elon Musk based on his personal behavior is a good way to kill Tesla. They only value the profits that he can generate for them, and he knows it.

Re: Tesla Plunges After a Conference Call

#246

Post by MagnumOpus »

mephitix wrote: post #231
YurtleTheTurtle wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He doesn't want to admit they company will need to raise money later this year.

He actually addressed capital raise on the call and it was pretty clear when he kept saying that they wouldn't need or want a capital raise

Yes, but that is the sort of "boring" detail that he routinely lies about (as are ramp-up schedules, delivery amounts, revenues and that sort of boorish stuff only Wall Street nerds care about)

Re: Tesla Plunges After a Conference Call

#247

Post by TAForObvReasons »

gfody wrote: post #236
arkis22 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A little more context from the WSJ article ( https://www.wsj.com/articles/teslas-elon-musk-turns-conferen... ) >“We’re going to go to YouTube, sorry. These questions are so dry. They’re killing me.” He directed the operator to take questions from Tesla investor Galileo Russell, whose HyperChange TV YouTube channel features a video titled, “Why I Bought Tesla Today at $255/Share.” >Mr. Russell, who had campaigned to g…

In the grand scheme of things figuring out how to make model3's faster than they can sell them is a boring problem for Musk and I could imagine how frustrating it must be to have all the banks freaking out as if they're going to miss a fleeting opportunity to sell a bunch of cars. It's like when Nikola Tesla was trying to build worldwide wireless telegraphy but J.P. Morgan just wanted him to make fluorescent lights.…

It may be a "boring" problem, but people aren't just paying for a reservation for nothing, ultimately they are expecting a car. And if there's no indication that they can meet the promises, that's a problem and he shouldn't be promising or giving wild production estimates in the first place.

Unless you believe that Musk is selling the ability for people to say they have a reservation. In which case there's no point to even bother building the cars in the first place.

Re: Tesla Plunges After a Conference Call

#249

Post by greglindahl »

jacquesm wrote: post #232
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…

Not answering a couple of questions (to which he should have had the answers) cost him a substantial premium the next time he has to raise. And almost nobody believes that Tesla will not need money again.

Is this speculation, or are you talking about some previous time where Tesla had to pay a lot more to raise after an Elon comment?

Also, can you point out who said "Tesla will not need money again"? Elon is always careful to say something like "We will not need to raise money in ". And then he raises money, says he did it because the price was right but it wasn't needed. Shorts accuse him of lying. Rinse, repeat.

Re: Tesla Plunges After a Conference Call

#250

Post by throwaway2048 »

ryandrake wrote: post #207
ShabbosGoy wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it’s not like a weekly status update meeting. It’s a tad unprofessional IMO. As the CEO of a public company, you are accountable above all to your shareholders.

Are these shareholders he’s talking to, or investment bank analysts trying to get the CEO to fill in their spreadsheets for them? I guess I’d be a bad CEO but I don’t get why an “investor” call should be about the company showing respect, bowing down and kissing Wall Street’s ring.

There is a difference between asking straightforward financial questions from his shareholders with grace and tact and "bowing down and kissing Wall Street’s ring"

Yes his shareholders, you know the people that were specificly invited to this call, own the company and that he has to directly answer to, by law.

Instead musk decided to childishly deflect.

Post reply on HN