Will Twitter-obsessed Musk bring Tesla down?

If the boss sleeps in the factory, the production efficiency will really increase.

In less than two weeks after Zhu Xiaotong, president of Tesla Greater China, settled in the Texas Gigafactory, the factory's weekly production tripled to 3,000 vehicles. Converted into annual output, it is 150,000 vehicles.

Moreover, the production increase of the Texas factory will not stop there.

News from Electrek indicates that the Texas plant plans to deliver 75,000 Model Ys in the first quarter of 2023. Converted into weekly output, it is more than 5,000 vehicles per week.

But Tesla's stock price has not been able to hit the strides that the Texas factory's production capacity has.

On Monday, Tesla's stock price continued to fall, hitting a two-year low. Tesla's stock price has fallen 62.53% this year, and this number may continue to expand.

The reason behind this has nothing to do with Musk.

rob Peter to pay Paul

Last week, Musk dumped 22 million Tesla shares in three days, and this time he cashed out a total of $3.6 billion.

Musk last sold shares of the world's most valuable automaker just a month ago. That time, he exchanged 4 billion US dollars and made a promise of "not selling Tesla again".

Obviously Musk has forgotten what he said. This year, he has sold a total of $40 billion worth of Tesla shares .

Where did all the money go?

According to the New York Times , Musk previously said in a Twitter staff meeting that he was selling Tesla stock to "save" the company.

Without Tesla's continuous "blood transfusion", Musk's Twitter will be difficult to survive.

Before Musk took over Twitter, although the company's revenue had slowed, it was still growing and not in financial distress. But Musk's leveraged buyout has left the company with a whopping $13 billion in debt and an annual interest cost of about $1.29 billion , more than Twitter made last year. The continuous loss of cash has brought enormous pressure to Twitter.

Meanwhile, Twitter is still struggling with unstoppable losses.

Since Musk dismissed Twitter's top management, board of directors, and most of its employees overnight, Twitter had to pay a substantial severance package. At the same time, the recruitment of new employees and the implementation of new businesses will continue to consume a large amount of cash for a period of time.

Twitter's change of ownership has had a huge impact on the company's advertising revenue , losing many major clients, including General Motors, Ford Motor and Oreo maker Mondelez International.

With the financial outlook deteriorating, Musk's bankers have no interest in lending Twitter any more cash. In desperation, the important task of saving the company fell on Tesla's shoulders.

It is not the first time Musk has done such a thing as tearing down the east wall to make up for the west wall.

In 2009, when Tesla was in trouble, Musk borrowed $20 million from SpaceX to maintain the company's normal operations.

In 2016, Tesla became the "East Wall" again, acquiring SolarCity, a solar panel company founded by two of Musk's cousins, which was on the verge of bankruptcy at the time, absorbing its roughly $3 billion in debt.

In 2018, Musk diverted SpaceX funds to support his tunnel transportation company, The Boring Company, which caused dissatisfaction among investors. In exchange, SpaceX ended up getting a 6% stake in The Boring Company.

“There’s nothing wrong with Tesla except having a CEO who works at another company,” longtime Tesla supporter Ross Gerber tweeted recently.

Tesla now has no CEO

Musk's approach naturally angered Tesla shareholders. After all, Musk demolished their walls.

In October 2021, Tesla's market value successfully exceeded one trillion U.S. dollars, becoming the world's largest automaker by market value. But today, Tesla's market cap is less than $470 billion. Among them, nearly 250 billion U.S. dollars evaporated after Musk acquired Twitter.

Even if taking money from Tesla to support Twitter won't have a short-term impact on Tesla's financials, if Twitter's situation continues to deteriorate and Musk continues to spend a lot of cash to save it, Tesla's prospects will become worse. more uncertain.

After all, Tesla plans to increase the production of two new super factories and deliver the new Cybertruck next, and the location of the fifth super factory will be announced soon.

Liao Kaiyuan, Tesla’s third largest individual shareholder and Chinese entrepreneur, recently posted on Twitter, calling on Tesla to find a new CEO to replace Musk, “I hope to see an executive like Cook take over the company.” ".

Gary Black, who owns about $50 million worth of Tesla stock, also expressed his disappointment: "Tesla has no CEO today."

He also pointed the finger at Musk, believing that the Twitter incident had a great negative impact on Tesla's brand .

Although Twitter and Tesla are completely independent businesses in different industries, the former's plight will not have a direct impact on Tesla, but the indirect impact is inevitable.

A month after Musk took over Twitter, for the first time in the U.S. market, there were more negative views on Tesla than positive ones, according to data from YouGov, a British market research company. of.

According to data from Morning Consult, an American consulting firm, 38% of respondents held a positive view of Tesla that month, down from 43% in January this year. In addition, the heightened economic uncertainty and the decline in vehicle demand have also exacerbated consumers' concerns about Tesla.

"It's very difficult to separate (view) a company from its leaders," said Richard Levick, chairman and CEO of the public relations firm Levick, who criticized Musk much more than before.

The palms and the backs of the hands are full of flesh

The aforementioned Tesla investor Black believes that the situation will only improve after Twitter finds a reliable CEO and its financial situation is also restored.

Musk also seems to realize that Tesla's reputation is closely related to himself, and it may really not work if this continues.

After watching the World Cup final in Qatar, Musk launched a "poll" on Twitter:

Should I resign as Twitter CEO? I will abide by the results of this vote.

The results showed that more than 16 million users participated in the vote, of which 57.5% supported his resignation 1 hour before the end of the vote.

However, Musk did not elaborate on when he would abide by the findings of the investigation and resign voluntarily. What's more, he also revealed in the comment area that there is currently "no successor".

Additionally, Bloomberg reported that Musk is looking for new equity investors for Twitter at $54.20 per share. That's the same price he paid to take Twitter private.

It was a tough sell for Musk, but one he had to pull off.

This may be the only way to save Twitter without damaging Tesla.

References:
[1] Bloomberg – Musk Is Seeking New Twitter Investors at Same Price He Paid
[2] WSJ-Elon Musk's Twitter Politics Add to Pressure on Tesla's Brand Image
[3] Sina Technology – If Twitter falls, will Tesla be far behind?

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