Tesla's Finance Team Is Losing Another Top Executive
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
Also, many of the departing people are just leaving. They're not being poached by competitors, they're just leaving. Something smells fishy.
They don't actually make money and their largest competitors have literal billions in cash on hand to buy off their entire labor force if they so chose?
Was that ironical? Sure, it is a strong experience to get burned out, but maybe one I can miss out.
Can you elaborate? I am not following you?
- Tesla's stock is getting crushed after TWO EXECUTIVES JUMP SHIP and CEO Elon Musk smokes weed [1]
- Tesla ERUPTS IN CHAOS After Senior Execs Leave, Musk Tokes Up [2]
Only to read internally it was a bit more tame than "JUMPING SHIP!!!!!":
> "As many of you know, Tesla’s Chief People Officer Gaby Toledano has been on leave for a few months to spend more time with her family and has decided to continue doing so for personal reasons. She’s been amazing and I’m very grateful for everything she’s done for Tesla." [3]
So the executive was on LOA for multiple months beforehand? Seems really disingenuous to craft headlines like that. Does anyone have more detail?
But then again and to be fair, anything from Tesla would do serious controlled messaging.
Point is, with all Tesla news, I'm not even sure what to believe anymore. I see headline like this, and my first thought is "Is this even true?". Maybe Tesla is really as in trouble as these headlines lead on, maybe they are not. Maybe Elon has "gone mad" and tanking the stock to go private. Maybe it's just trendy and fun to write negative news against Tesla's stock valuation right now. Who knows what's actually happening.
It's all just a bit too much reading in between the lines anymore... Just SHOW ME THE NUMBERS next earnings report and I'll decide for myself.
[1] https://nordic.businessinsider.com/tesla-stock-down-musk-fil...
[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-07/tesla-chi...
What's actually happening is executives are leaving. Many more of them than is normal in such a short time. That's what's actually happening.
Why that's happening is certainly open for debate, but there are no answers to "why" that are good. The only reason that wouldn't suck is that it's just a coincidence that they don't want to be there. But keep in mind, one of the finance people was new to the company and quit. To me that says they walked in, saw what was happening and said "yeah, sorry, no." But that's speculation on my part. We should stick to the facts - an unusual number of executives have been leaving the company in a short time.
They have 37,000 employees. If 1% of them are "executives" and the average executive stays for five years, the mean time between executive departures would be five days. Are they actually averaging significantly more than one departure every five days?
There are a lot of them for a company like Tesla. People join for the big payout — when corporate big shots suddenly find reward in spending time with family, you need to ask questions.
Since the beginning of the year I see this business everyone was talking about last week with the Chief Accounting Officer, and then one for the Director of Manufacturing and Engineering and one for the President of Global Sales and Service. Is this supposed to be an unusually large number? The other 8-K filings do not appear to be related to departures/arrivals.
By comparison, in the same time period GM replaced their CAO, their CFO and a member of the board.
The numbers in both cases would obviously be higher if you broaden the category to include lower positions that don't make the 8-K filings like the Tesla VP in the current story, but people are saying "look how many" without specifying the breadth of the pool or how many should be expected.
None of this takes away from the amazing achievements of the company. But the company is probably on life support and it’s time to sell.
The original claim was that the number of departures was high. Comparing the number of departures, there does not appear to be a large disparity.
You raise the question of the context. The first Tesla CAO left citing personal reasons. The conspiracy theory is that this is a dog whistle for some kind of accounting irregularities, but as far as I know neither he nor anyone else with actual knowledge has even suggested that as a motive. What actual evidence is there that he didn't honestly leave for personal reasons?
The second CAO actually described his reasons:
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/07/tesla-cao-dave-morton-quit-a...
The whole "funding secured" drama literally happened on his second day and he didn't like it.
Nothing about that episode is super inspiring and his reaction is entirely understandable, but how is this supposed to spell doom for the company?
Meanwhile the other departures seem to be for the normal reasons with people in a low unemployment job market finding another job somewhere else and that sort of thing.
But given the drama, now people are looking under every rock for something to gossip about.
If someone takes a "leave of absence" that ends up lasting several months, and that becomes a permanent leave of absence (read: they quit), that does indicate problems. Not in a one-off scenario, but in Tesla's case where they've lost dozens of executives once they realized that [possible bias here] Tesla is clearly engaging in fraud, it's not just a one-off thing. The smart executives are jumping ship, leaving behind either a) the not so smart executives or b) the smart people like Straubel who are close enough to Elon that they wouldn't leave.
see: bogus solarcity acquisition to avoid the dominos falling in Musk's highly coupled empire, clear intent to cause a short squeeze with the bullshit going private tweet [if you look at musk's actions/statements leading up to that, it's clear the shorts have been stressing him out], Musk having borrowed money to purchase even more Tesla shares, worker injury rate [this isn't fraud but I decided to throw it in there], etc etc etc
[0] https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/7/17831204/tesla-accounting-...
There is a huge gap between what these people think is happening (Tesla is taking over the world!) and reality. This company could go under and they wouldn't believe it. I've never seen anything like it.
That should say more than the numbers do by themselves.
Tesla is:
- Missing weekly production targets (currently at ~15%)
- Burning through cash reserves (-34% YTD)
- Increasing liabilities (+20% YTD)
This is all while there are Model 3 quality issues, and refusing a cash injection from VW. The solarcity acquisition was questionable as well, considering Musk founded solarcity, and now there is a lawsuit by Tesla investors against him.
Some investors are still cutting the CEO slack because of his previous success with Paypal, but automobile manufacturing is a different beast.
There's a lot more to it than that though. Telsa is a huge achievement already. They've not only created cars that a lot of people love, they disrupted and accelerated an entire industry.
Not to mention SpaceX.
SpaceX is great too but I would say it's still a little too early to say it's as successful as Paypal was.
Production Tracker: https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-tesla-tracker/
Tesla Financials: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/TSLA/financials
Model 3 Quality Issues: https://www.forbes.com/sites/brookecrothers/2018/09/02/tesla...
Refusing VW Cash: https://www.wsj.com/articles/public-bravado-private-doubts-h...
Shareholders suing over Solarcity Acquisition: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-shareholders/tesla-...
There’s some hysterical headlines because they get clicks, but Musk has been doing the hard work of tanking his image and hurting Tesla without a bit of help.
Without the benefit of the internal memo, I would have assumed maternity leave and deciding not to come back. It's common. With the memo though, it sounds like she may have been caring for another family member, or some similar situation, and just decided it isn't worth it to come back.
Or, Occam's Razor: the news is reporting this stuff because Musk made it newsworthy by constantly hyping and over-promising in the past. As a consequence of this self-initiated publicity, negative events concerning Musk and Tesla are now considered newsworthy, even if they wouldn't be for other executives/companies.
That being said, no matter what company you are, losing 5 C-suite executives in less than a year is extremely disturbing news and in almost all cases is usually followed by the company declaring bankruptcy in some form within a few months.
Ah yes, the new 'fake news' spiel being thrown around for any media outlet.
Theoretical answer: The cars would continue to function as cars, but network-dependent features like Autopilot and remote unlocking/monitoring would cease.
It's going to Chapter 7 - Liquidation.
Funding secured
https://www.tesla.com/autopilot
> Tesla’s Enhanced Autopilot software has begun rolling out and features will continue to be introduced as validation is completed, subject to regulatory approval.
now I did not need to use a super charger but one would hope they don't need network access to work and would just keep a local database of cars that are allowed. would be damn silly to require a call to the mothership for each charging session.
With the key card?
http://www.uscourts.gov/services-forms/bankruptcy/bankruptcy...
There is virtually no question that the Supercharger network will be bought by someone in the event of Tesla going under -- another car company, or another company that already operates a charging network, or even a new company formed to run the network. The new owner would almost certainly open it up to non-Tesla customers if that's at all possible, too. I don't think this is just true of this network, either; I have little doubt that all of Tesla will be bought if they collapse, although they might be broken up and bought piecemeal.
If I was forced to make a prediction for Tesla's fate, though, this wouldn't be it. I think it's most likely that Tesla will be bought in total by another carmaker within four years, and it will continue as a semi-independent brand for years past that, with its technology being diffused through the rest of their new owner's properties -- and vice-versa.
But, it begs a question about such system in the long-term. If we look at the electric car segment of all transport, as it replaces ICEs over time - the systems they rely on to function are bigger than a single brand.
No. There may be some enormously expensive, 3rd party service that springs up to fill demand for custom fixes with the machines, but warranty holders get nothing if the company goes bankrupt and dissolves liabilities.
I'd love to be a fly on the wall for the after drinks conversations between finance people in TSLA.
On it's current trajectory, Tesla is burning. But hey, here's a picture of me smoking weed. Did you know we are going to go private? Psych.
It is especially unusual for finance executives to leave so shortly after joining a new company. Barring serious family issues, it generally indicates serious financial problems at the new employer.
High turnover in any sector is terrible for business. This is true even for relatively "unskilled" labor: informal, often unwritten practices between workers are essential to any kind of collaborative work. See the "slightly different sense" here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work-to-rule
From what I can tell, I-bankers put in their time and either rise to a cushier role within the bank or they get into something else.
Juniors are judged by long hours and making sure their commas are perfect (in documents rarely read by clients) because there is nothing else to judge them on.
Like, Musk abuses his engineers who meekly accept that sort of thing. The theory that finance people standind up to it is something bad is absurd.
Think about it...Musk has been growing increasingly erratic lately. It's a hot company, they seem to be hitting their numbers and yet people are bailing under rather circumstances (<1 month after joining a hot startup?)
Something is obviously putting incredible levels of psychological pressure on them.
hmmm...need to check whether I can short this tomorrow.
I wish there was a way to see who is paying these authors and who is donating to these publishers. If we could follow the money it may reveal some motivation beyond the click bait headlines, or maybe not.
At least once a week the Financial Times has been roasting Tesla/Elon too.
This is not a conspiracy. It's basic math and accounting.
https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2018/09/07/1536327657000/If-it-h...
Here's some for you: https://www.quora.com/Is-Tesla-losing-money-on-each-Model-3-...
But really what you're implying is, when Fremont is a closer to full produciton, each Model 3 will net a loss. Best engineers say no. https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/2018-tesla-model-3-munro-...
Even Tesla's public financials show they lost more money, when they made less model 3s.
Embedded inside that assumption are a lot of assumptions about ramps in production with consistent quality and finish, and lack of EV competition.
I personally disagree that Tesla can maintain production and quality at these levels without needing more financing, but the verdict is definitely not in yet.
Now you want to talk about demand? OK.
- Tesla is mentioned in multiple current top rap songs.
- Elon has the most viewed episode of the most viewed podcast.
- Tesla is working on a rocket powered car.
- Teslas are featured in major TV shows and movies.
- $45k auto loan is within range of your average middle class budget.
You think that wont translate to sales? We'll see.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/18/tesla-stock-drops-after-comp...
Is your imagination based on any facts, or just your feelings?
From my point of view, they are not currently profitable and becoming profitable is not in the near future. Are there any independent analysts that are predicting Telsa profitability on the same timeline as Tesla themselves?
You might be right that these authors have some kind of bias against Tesla, but it is a 100% certainty that Tesla has a bias for itself. It seems hypocritical to distrust independent news organizations but then blindly trust Tesla.
News organizations provide extra contextual information that reveals that "strictly manufacturing numbers" aren't representative of the company's performance. This is why they are valued.
But that's getting away from the point: you're distrustful of news organizations for possibly having motives, and yet you're trustful of Tesla even though they definitely have motives. It doesn't make sense.
As for the news organizations, there is a possibility they have motives and the way many of the articles are composed does not help the case that they do not have motives, whether that be get the most clicks or push down another organization. I believe they have laws in place as well to protect readers from this sort of behavior, but I'm not sure.
Both types of organizations have been known to break the law though so we're left wondering what the future will hold. It will be fun to look back in the months ahead and see which theory was correct.
If you're going to make a broadly defamatory claim about an entire industry, you need to back it up with evidence.
VW comes to mind in the auto industry and I'd have to Google "news company found guilty" for you for the other.