Tesla stock sinks after Musk gives tearful NYT interview | Hacker News Reader

Tesla stock sinks after Musk gives tearful NYT interview

reuters.com

69 pointssmaili59 comments

Don't blame short sellers if you are helping them with every interview and public feud.

Just the fact that there is nobody strong enough in the company to talk sense to Musk and put PR people between him and twitter says a lot. That pedophile spectacle should have been the last time we hear unfiltered Musk.

I think there's a reasonable argument to be made that if a leader has enough time to spend some on twitter they probably have their priorities wrong.

As much as I normally can't stand Twitter, the exact opposite is true. One of the primary responsibilities of a leader of a company is public relations, and Twitter is a useful conduit for that.

If the CEO is having to work 120 hours a week and sleeping at the factory, maybe Twitter PR isn't the most pressing concern.

Don’t forget that he’s taking ambien to sleep...

This isn’t going to end well if he doesn’t slow down.

While this is true, the guy lives, sweats and breathes his companies. If youve ever seen the interview when he talks about pouring his last dollars into spacex and tesla and having NASA come thru as well as his VCs at the 11th hour around xmas (close of fiscal year) he talks about stress. He said “if i was capable of an emotional breakdown, this is as close as i have ever come”.

He works for his goals 100% of the time and regardless of whether he is fucking up, he defends his companies like children. He goes on Twitter for both PR and defense. It is both emotional and tactical to different degrees. Like or hate the guy, he’s fucking all in all the time. It both helps and hurts his companies, but on balance i think it got him where he is.

Hallelujah. It's a little disheartening to me to see so many responses, especially on HN of all places, sort of arguing that Musk should be acting like a typical Fortune 500 CEO.

Musk's deep flaws are also the strengths that have allowed him to accomplish the near impossible in the first place.

> It both helps and hurts his companies, but on balance i think it got him where he is.

Everything gets people to where they are until it doesn't. My question is, what next?

See: @IridiumBoss and @ToryBruno for great examples of responsive social media savvy(ish) CEOs who've used Twitter to great (and no ill) effect - albeit both riding on the coattails of Musk.

Can you fill me in on what you mean by coattails of Musk in relation to Iridium? Iridium and their original satellites have been around for a long time (much longer than SpaceX) and while they now use some of the services of SpaceX, "riding on the coattails of Musk" seems a bit harsh?

I just mean their social media presences, not the companies themselves! Aside from the core group of us space enthusiasts who've been around no matter who's doing what, much of the new blood & energy has come from people who started paying attention because of SpaceX - and the latter have very much influenced everyone in the movement in terms of expecting more from our space CEOs on social media (like answers to random questions we bug them with on Twitter even if they're not directly relevant to their companies, e.g. Matt Desch telling us about the movements of SpaceX boosters for IRDM missions).

> One of the primary responsibilities of a leader of a company is public relations

Coordinating the strategy, yes.

Being a public face, also yes.

Participating in drafting the most important, and approving any important, releases? Sure.

Actually working the social media accounts on a daily basis while burning the midnight oil? Not so much. If Twitter PR is that important and Musk is so indispensable running it personally rather than delegating (which probably isn't the case, but for the sake of argument...), than he needs to offload some of the other stuff to a COO or co-CEO.

Firing off a tweet takes like 20 seconds. If your argument is that he needs to delegate this responsibility to become more efficient, it's not a good argument.

a CEO of a public company should know that saying anything in public after thinking about it for only 20 seconds is just going to create disasters... Or make you POTUS.

A CEO can talk frankly in his office or on the golf course. Perhaps even in front of the board. At any other time he should be scripted.

I occasionally had a call from the CEO's secretary to review any statements about systems in my domain. Usually that was distilled down to one bulletpoint on a slide, but it still had to be checked and approved. Too much at stake to let him ad lib from memory.

One of his predecessors did so in the late 90s and publically committed us to a Web retail presence within a year. That was not a fun year.

There was a time when Musk could accomplish more with a tweet than GM or Ford could with a multi-million dollar ad campaign.

and we will soon find out whether feeding the evening news cycle is enough of an accomplishment to keep a car company going that keeps burning money like nothing else. I'm not sure what Musk 'accomplishes' with these tweets.

So true. The exchange on twitter[0], between Atlassian's co-CEO Cannon-Brookes and Musk, that lead to the 100MW battery being installed in South Australia was only about a year ago.

0: https://twitter.com/i/moments/840050021521268736

It's called procrastination. Musk should come over to HN - there's the noprocrast feature, and dang will keep his comments in check.

wait there's a noprocast feature?

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=IIAOPSW

it's called noprocrast it's a dropdown, 'No' by default.

I see it now.

But what does it do?

Stops you wasting too much time on HN. It's deliciously wonderful at thwarting your attempts to read (and respond to) too many articles.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

>> If you turn it on you'll only be allowed to visit the site for maxvisit minutes at a time, with gaps of minaway minutes in between. The defaults are 20 and 180, which would let you view the site for 20 minutes at a time, and then not allow you back in for 3 hours.

Not at all. This is what you get if you demand a leader have terrible work/life balance.

This is such a silly, blow-hardy meme (like Marissa Meyer suggesting that you can get ahead by limiting how often you use the bathroom [0]).

It doesn't take a meaningful amount of time to submit a tweet or use the bathroom. (And, even if it did, human effort isn't fungible.)

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2016/09...

If a tweet takes 30 seconds to conceive, type, and submit, Elon Musk has spent 45 hours of his life tweeting -- no way to estimate how much time spent reading, which is usually a higher proportion for non-egomaniacs. Judging by the way he talks, he could have used that time a little more productively by reading a couple books. Conveniently, also much harder to tank your stock price while doing.

Considering the influence of his Twitter account, Musk should be spending a lot longer than 30 seconds composing a tweet.

You'd think, right?

Tesla reached 70,000 Model 3’s today.

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-tesla-tracker/

Their next goal is 6,000 a week. Musk should just take a week off and let his team work on it.

So here's the thing - the NYT has painted a picture of a exhausted on the end of his tether Musk...

But then we have an actual video interview given hours before: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MevKTPN4ozw

he looks exhausted. whats your point?

To me he looks sleep deprived in this interview.

He does but remains very engaged and passionate. That tells me he is fine. The narrative was that he was near the point of breakdown which is over exaggerated.

As an example:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-17/odey-says...

To me Musk always comes across as genuine, even to a fault with his often optimistic predictions. HN crown seems to always hate corporate speech and fake smoothness, I'd think his style would be appreciated here.

I agree with the other posters, he looks incredibly out of it here...

He looks a little disheveled, but I see your point. It's obvious that he's not as unhinged as the market and commentary would lead us to believe.

Maybe I'm being naive (and I'll admit that I haven't seen the interview), but if your goal was to buy back shares to take the company private, wouldn't a lower stock price be better for you?

No. For one, Tesla has a lot of convertible bonds coming due at $360 a share. If the price is above that, it just converts to stock, but below that Tesla needs to pay out cash.

If Musk actually had the "Funding Secured", a lower price would strictly be better. All the convertible bonds do is set a floor for the cost of extinguishing the convertible debt.

The only circumstance in which a lower price would be detrimental would be one in which Tesla actually doesn't intend to go private. If they aren't going private, then they would have to deal with the cash crunch.

A shareholder approval won't go through if the price is "low".

Musk didn't want to buy the whole company, just move it to private investors. Converting debt to stock is part of the funding for completing the goal.

Thats the thing, there is no video interview... its just NYT's description.

There was another video interview done hours before: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MevKTPN4ozw

Musk looks haggard in the interview - Cramer commented if he were on the board he'd insist on medical time off, can't say I disagree.

Who better to trust for insight in this issue than market manipulator, lack of sleeping himself, Cramer?

Disclaimer: I don't disagree.

Yes, you've made that comment twice now. He's exhausted and kind of scattered in that interview. Not surprising that he was at a breaking point by the time he got to the NY Times.

You can’t just buy the shares back. Sometimes shares aren’t for sale. If I have 100,000 shares, you can’t just buy them from me — I have to sell them to you. You have to target high in order to entice shareholders to sell.

It is like housing market: the moment there are more buyers than sellers, the prices rise. That's why when funds want to buy(sell) lots of shares, they spread it out over weeks by working with market makers. No one is going to naked sell (or short) shares in a rising market.

When an entity acquires more than 5% of a publicly traded company, it needs to file 13(d). And it is hard to acquire even 30% of shares in the span of 3 months: people/algos watch volume every day. This is why it is easier to offer premium and buy the company outright, than to go through the rigmarole of 13(d), working with market makers, etc.

Elon Musk crashing and burning is not a good outcome for the world. He's right on the cusp of sustainable success but there's a chance he won't get over it.

Steve Jobs knew how to hire people that could do a lot of the stuff he wasn't good at. Elon Musk hasn't become good at this yet.

Tim Cook should swoop in and buy Tesla right now. It's already a match made in heaven and now would be a great time. Musk could take a breather and then they would be an amazing team.

If Apple bought Tesla they'd throw Musk out first thing.

Only if he didn't want to stay. Apple has a history of keeping around the CEOs of acquired companies and Musk would be the best they ever got.

Just because the peanut gallery is on the Elon Musk sucks train doesn't mean everyone is. Tim Cook isn't going to be swayed by a popularity contest.

> Elon Musk crashing and burning is not a good outcome for the world. He's right on the cusp of sustainable success but there's a chance he won't get over it.

I'm not convinced that more cars (even electric cars) or tunnels will ever be sustainable for the planet.

Like a basketball player with their lucky socks, perhaps Musk attributes too much of his earlier success to all nighters and 90hr weeks. All the science around sleep would suggest that any occasional benefit from those intense bursts of creativity will turn into a net loss if there’s never any time for rest. Real rest, not Ambien “rest”.

Elon need not worry much about the Wall Street right now. His major concern has to be hiring an Operational wizard. Elon can't do everything himself, though he likes to believe he can. Elon, get someone like Tim Cook as a COO. It will do wonders for Tesla and your personal life.

Also, meditate.

Funny. People wanted Musk for CEO of Apple, now Tim Cook as COO of Tesla. AAPL + TSLA, Cook + Musk, quite an action:)

I doubt Musk would be a good fit for Apple. It won't fit Musk's ambitions. Apple and Tesla have very different value propositions.

I'm kind of fine with Tim Cook staying as Apple's CEO, even though I don't have any particular overall sentiments either way toward the company. He seems to be the right person for the job. Elon Musk however does not seem fit to be CEO of any company right at this moment. I'm happy to be shown wrong - show us next week/quarter/year.

I'm surprised by the surprise. The interview was just Musk being Musk. Everyone knew he worked his butt off, and devoted his life to his companies, has been through a handful of failed marriages, and has generally harmed his personal life. The interview just confirmed it.

I should know better to time the market, but the idea appeals to me so I've been telling myself shorting Tesla could be a way to make a pile of money. (Even without a business meltdown. Just economic headwinds could deflate Tesla.)

I don't short though, because it seems somehow a little shady. (Wishing bad luck on the shorted company.)

I'll just watch this one from the sidelines. It'll be interesting to see how it all turns out.

Too much Ambien.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com