Tesla investors are starting to get increasingly concerned that Elon Musk’s focus on Twitter is taking him away from the automaker as its stock is falling.
The CEO tried to reassure shareholders saying that he has “Tesla covered,” but he also said that he is sleeping at Twitter’s headquarters “until the social media is fixed.”
It is not hypothetical that Musk’s acquisition of Twitter is negatively affecting Tesla.
The CEO had to sell billions of dollars worth of Tesla stocks to secure the transaction, which contributed to a significant decline in Tesla’s market capitalization.
Tesla has lost more in value since Musk’s acquisition of Twitter than the total value of the $44 billion acquisition.
Musk has even announced that Tesla will initiate a stock buyback program, pending board approval, to help boost the stock price.
Beyond Musk selling Tesla stocks, fans and investors are also concerned about the CEO spending less time at the automaker as he tries to implement his vision at Twitter.
One of those fans complained to Musk on Twitter, and the CEO responded that he has “Tesla covered too” and he will at Tesla “part of this week”:
However, Musk also said that he would be sleeping at Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco “until the org is fixed”:
I’ve been at Twitter SF HQ all night. Will be working & sleeping here until org is fixed.
The CEO has been known to spend a lot of time at his companies when they are facing challenges, including sleeping on Tesla’s factory floor when ramping up Model 3 production.
Electrek’s Take
Top comment by Mark Wegman
Tesla might be better off without Musk at this point.
Musk is clearly great at setting up companies and coming up with initial directions. It's not clear he's good at leading an established company to optimize it's every move just right. Tesla is big enough and has an established profitable revenue stream that is enormous (all of the auto industry) that going after that is enough for quite a while. They don't need to come up with new things like optimus robots to find a new market. The old one is good enough, and if that one isn't enough, then there's always solar roofs.
Musk is making a complete mess of Twitter, firing people responsible for their main revenue drivers and in other ways demonstrating he doesn't understand the major parameters of the company. He's offended a large part of the twitterverse and many content providers who are the reason people visit Twitter are looking at ways to leave.
Moreover he's also offended a number of potential Tesla customers. Tesla's mission has been to save the world from the climate crisis, so why did he suggest people vote for the pollution party, just at a time when other companies are producing viable alternative BEVs.
He's demonstrated that he can't hang on to many of his most important executives. As he devolves from the pressure of failing at Twitter, he may make more mistakes at Twitter.
Musk was great for a long time, but he's no longer indispensable.
With Musk running Tesla, SpaceX, the Boring Company, and Neuralink, investors were already worried about him spreading himself too thin.
Now that he is adding Twitter into the mix, the concern is more than fair – especially for Tesla shareholders since it’s an extremely large public company.
There have been talks before about replacing Musk as CEO of Tesla to have someone who can focus entirely on Tesla and have Musk focus more on his “product architect” role.
For the sake of Tesla’s mission, it might be worth revisiting that option. What do you think? Let us know in the comments section below.
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