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Tesla Enters “Whistleblower Hell”

thedrive.com

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Re: Tesla Enters “Whistleblower Hell”

#71

Post by nradov »

optimiz3 wrote: post #67
finnthehuman wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude. You gotta let it go. These are pretty unsurprising allegations for a company like Tesla. And short sellers are not the boogieman, they're just an indication that the value of Tesla is highly uncertain.

IDK man, TheDrive pushes non-stop anti-Tesla stories, it's not unreasonable to suspect their motives. Just look at their story history; not exactly unbiased.

I haven't seen any bias. Do you have specific examples of them reporting false or distorted news about Tesla?

Re: Tesla Enters “Whistleblower Hell”

#72

Post by refurb »

drusepth wrote: post #61
vikramkr wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they really haven't. The best way to deal with shorts is to have a good quarter and crush them all. Or wait for a short squeeze. Lots of companies have misinformation spread by shorts all the time, but very few companies engage and attack shorts.

Why don't more companies "engage and attack shorts"? Aren't people taking short positions on companies effectively lowering the stock price of the company compared to someone just not buying their stock, and therefore doing potential damage to that company's valuation and future? I'm surprised any company has the time to engage and attack those kinds of threats, but I'm not surprised there is an incentive for them to…

If you want to see the correct way to deal with a short seller, look up what HerbalLife did against Pershing capital’s massive short.

They basically continued to grow and show positive financials. Eventually Pershing exited his position.

It’s not worth playing a PR game. You’re just asking to get called out on some statement you made.

The proof is in the pudding. Sell lots of cars. Don’t claim your going to sell 500,000 vehicles this year, then come back and say “oh, I meant if you annualized our peak month”.

Re: Tesla Enters “Whistleblower Hell”

#73

Post by tylerl »

ghostly_s wrote: post #8
vikramkr wrote: post #4

Tesla (or at least Elon) has a terrible habit of engaging with critics in deeply unproductive ways, such as all the anti short seller stuff they pulled. It makes them look very defensive and seem like they feel vulnerable/cant face the criticism, and maybe it's because they actually are vulnerable and doing things that merit short selling and whistleblowing. At least from a PR perspective you dont want to engage like…

If you have any examples of companies who weren't doing something unsavory and had a recurrent problem with whistleblowers I'd love to hear them.

Whistleblowing by definition means reporting something that (someone thinks) is unsavory. You can argue whether a given set of whistleblowers are misguided, but otherwise you don't call them whistleblowers.

Re: Tesla Enters “Whistleblower Hell”

#74

Post by Ninjak2 »

__blockcipher__ wrote: post #46
fouc wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently there's a bit more to that. Tesla is very leveraged right now and apparently it would be an issue if the share price dropped too much, forcing Tesla to do some sort of liquidity event? So the big short sellers are trying to force the share prices down enough that Tesla is forced to deal with this, which would push the share prices down even more and let them profit hugely.

> Tesla is very leveraged right now and apparently it would be an issue if the share price dropped too much In other words, the shorts are totally right to be taking their position? A company that depends on its stock price to stay afloat is not a healthy company. Let’s take AAPL as an example. Their stock could plunge to $1/share and they would be absolutely fine because they have positive free cash flow, and thus d…

In your example, Apple would not be absolutely fine. Key employees are compensated largely in stock and many would start looking for other jobs if their trailing four years of RSU grants suddenly became nearly worthless. Now Apple could step up and issue additional RSUs to employees to keep them onboard, but that has consequences too. So you can see how a tanking stock price is extremely disruptive, even if you don't need to raise capital.

Re: Tesla Enters “Whistleblower Hell”

#75

Post by reitzensteinm »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #58
kec wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But which is the more likely causes of this: That TSLA is the victim of an evil coordinated effort to cause the company to take, or just that 30% of the market genuinely believes they're overvalued. Given they have a higher market cap than either Ford or Honda, I'd be betting on the latter....

Equity value (market cap + debt) the real measure of company valuation, since debt holders are owners too. Ford's EV is 145B (42B market cap + 103B debt). Tesla's EV is 56B (44.5B market cap + 11.5B debt). Ford and Honda are still valued considerably higher than Tesla.

Ford has over 250 billion in assets. Quoting enterprise value without context is highly misleading.

Ford's debt and assets are largely from its financing arm. It doesn't make the car making part of Ford worth more.

Re: Tesla Enters “Whistleblower Hell”

#76

Post by true_tuna »

drcross wrote: post #5
vikramkr wrote: post #4

Tesla (or at least Elon) has a terrible habit of engaging with critics in deeply unproductive ways, such as all the anti short seller stuff they pulled. It makes them look very defensive and seem like they feel vulnerable/cant face the criticism, and maybe it's because they actually are vulnerable and doing things that merit short selling and whistleblowing. At least from a PR perspective you dont want to engage like…

Short sellers have been causing the company a lot of trouble, Musk is correct in pointing them out so that their activities become known.

Deliberately manipulating his stock price to damage short sellers is profoundly unprofessional behavior though. And apparently just a little bit illegal.

Re: Tesla Enters “Whistleblower Hell”

#77

Post by true_tuna »

kemiller wrote: post #10
vikramkr wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they really haven't. The best way to deal with shorts is to have a good quarter and crush them all. Or wait for a short squeeze. Lots of companies have misinformation spread by shorts all the time, but very few companies engage and attack shorts.

Tesla’s stock is shorted FAR more than any other company with comparable market cap. 30% of outstanding shares are shorted. It’s bonkers.

It’s not if the stock is overvalued. Time will tell. I’m actually a Tesla shareholder. I bought it when I believed in their vision. Musk’s antics have caused me to rethink the wisdom of my position though. I wouldn’t be surprised by a crash in share price. Then again I’m not betting on it either.

Re: Tesla Enters “Whistleblower Hell”

#78

Post by GuiA »

Lendal wrote: post #15

I never see stories about Ford's current lawsuits, or GM or Chrysler. I'm curious what goes on behind the scenes to get stories like these published and pushed out onto social media sites across the globe. Must be a pretty expansive operation because I see it every week, same stuff week in and week out. Is it true that other companies don't have disgruntled employees? I find that difficult to believe.

The CEOs of those companies aren’t committing securities fraud or insulting random people on Twitter, for starters.

Re: Tesla Enters “Whistleblower Hell”

#79

Post by sjwright »

pfundstein wrote: post #57
sjwright wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the driver was in control > If the AP went haywire It's disingenuous to imply that these are the only two possibilities, or that they are even mutually exclusive. The driver is always responsible for the operation of the car. Even if AP was engaged, AP never takes control away from the driver. Remember, AP isn't a licensed driver.

AP does actually "take control away" in that it performs some emergency safety maneuvers automatically. For instance it can swerve to avoid an imminent collision with another vehicle, but would it swerve into a pedestrian?

AP never override's the driver's steering wheel input and it never stops the driver from pushing the brake pedal. AP never takes control away.

Re: Tesla Enters “Whistleblower Hell”

#80

Post by grecy »

Lendal wrote: post #15

I never see stories about Ford's current lawsuits, or GM or Chrysler. I'm curious what goes on behind the scenes to get stories like these published and pushed out onto social media sites across the globe. Must be a pretty expansive operation because I see it every week, same stuff week in and week out. Is it true that other companies don't have disgruntled employees? I find that difficult to believe.

There are trillions of dollars at stake in the auto industry that Tesla is trying to seriously disrupt.

There are trillions of dollars at stake in the launch industry that SpaceX is trying to seriously disrupt.

There are trillions of dollars at stake in the ride-share/taxi industry that Tesla/Elon is trying seriously to disrupt.

There are a lot of people who are working very hard to paint a very negative picture of Elon/Tesla/SpaceX right now.

It's amazing that stories like this make headlines while the news that the Tesla Model 3 is outselling every other electric vehicle combined doesn't make a blip.

Follow the money.

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