Hacker News Reader

Comment by rickydroll | Hacker News Reader

If Tesla's board of directors had any cojones, they would dump Musk and distance themselves from him and his actions.

They are in a tough spot re:Elon. While long term, distancing Tesla from Elon and focusing on developing better EVs that out compete BYD, Xiaomi and other Chinese competitors would be the healthy move, they also realize that the company’s unreal valuation is completely tied to Elon and his made up storylines that never get delivered (FSD, Semi, Roadster 2, 4680 battery etc.). Dumping Elon would wipe out hundreds of Billions in shareholder value and the lawsuits would be brutal.

What do they say in most commercials about investing? Oh yes, "Investing in securities carries the risk of loss."

They could sideline him, perhaps put him in an oubliette for a while, then make some serious improvements to the current product line and start cultivating a culture of working without Musk.

I agree with the sentiment, however the board has fiduciary responsibilities towards the shareholders. If they make decisions that materially affect the company, in this case by destroying the valuation, then the shareholders can sue.

It will be extremely difficult for the board to justify that having Elon and letting him do whatever he wants is more damaging for the stock than kicking him out.

> his made up storylines that never get delivered

I don't get who is still out there believes him enough to put their own money into this company. But the stock keeps going up. I just don't get it?

It's a memestock. People are just gambling not investing. You see TSLA in the news, the news is bad so you know a bunch of people are rushing off to bet it goes up anyway...so you do too.

That's retail investors though? They're not really making the stock move?

If they do so Tesla is a regular company and should trade at a regular automotive sector P/E ratio, so what, one fifteenth of its current valuation ? That's a hard sell to investors. They are likely better off keeping that plane flying as long as possible hoping for a miracle, then crash, than soft landing, so are Tesla insiders, each quarter passing means more stocks dumped.

https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/tsla/insider-a...

As the parent said, Tesla's PE ratio indicates that investors are betting on massive future growth, obviously because of Elon's track record of delivering on his promises of new tech (....eventually). If getting rid of Elon caused Tesla to be priced like other car companies, the price would go down by 90+%.

No sane board member would consider that a serious option.

Board members are also significant shareholders, so they’d be tanking their own position (and would be hard to argue if they sold out shortly before distancing him that they had no insider knowledge of it).

He owns them all, they would never even consider firing him.

That's the only way I'd even have a second thought about Tesla ... but this is the cost of being all-powerful ... the inability to give up that power.

Even then, Tesla's duck is cooked. They're facing strong winds, reputational and otherwise, at the exact same time as the competition have come of age.

The perfect storm. It will take time, but Tesla are done.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com