I read a nice article in Modern Trader last night that suggested Elon Musk was a cult leader and that financial analysts and the public was giving him 'byes' that would not be given to other organizations. He illustrated the high debt, low volume of cars, competition and grandiose promises. He suggested that it should be trading at $30 a share instead of $230. His arguments were valid but the same arguments were probably spoken when Apple, Amazon and Ebay entered the market. It was pretty interesting.
Of course the article is correct. The real question about Musk is if he is just naive and really believes his own bullshit, or if he is really a psychopatic liar who doesn't give a shit about investors who believe in his future visions. (oh yeah, hyperloop my ass) I mean the guy lies constantly. Nothing he ever promises is on time or under budget. Gigafactory? A complete waste of investors money and misleading the Nevada officials who voted for it. Powerwall? Bailing out the extra capacity of the Gigafactory. SolarCity merger? Bailing out his cousin. The show just goes on and on. It is pretty obvious it won't end well, the question is just when will the music stop and when will the cult members finally realize that their dear leader has left the ship?? In the main time, get ready for the next equity raise/stock dilution, aka Tuesday in Tesla circles....
I agree with much of what you say. Musk has Trump's flair for self promotion. Earlier this year he said that he was going to sell 90K cars but he was only producing 20-30,000 a year. I think he only had 1 assembly line running and he was working on the second one. But he was producing the Tesla S, the new SUV and then he introduced the Tesla 3. You can't produce that many cars on 1 line and you can't get a new car designed and lined up for production in 1 year. I read a few weeks ago that they have a second production line being assembled but it still takes several months to design and implement. But it must be a good one, because the author of the story said that he was surprised at the automation and the absence of people on the line. He has a lot going on .....Rockets, solar panels, electric grids, cars, missions to Mars. The mans stays busy. This week he announced that he wanted to introduce a solar roof. Not a roof with solar panels, but a solar roof integrated into the home. The man thinks big, but in spite of his financial resources, I am not so sure his pockets are deep enough to make the dreams come true. He needs to start making money. He doesn't make most of the deadlines that he sets for investors but he eventually crosses the goal line. The man certainly has chutzpah. But he does have a big following. Zuckerberg and FB remind me of Tesla, but at least they are making money. I remember hearing an earnings report from Zuckerberg and he said (at that time ) that within 2 years that FB would be used by 5BN people. ....They aren't even 5BN people in the world that have electricity. And no one mentions that 30 percent of the FB accounts are inactive (like mine) and that many of the users have multiple accounts. Last week or so, I think they said that they had 1BN daily users. I assume that was entries. I want to know what percentage of those entries are from the same user. The financial press never holds these people accountable for their remarks. Yeah, Musk does some serious boasting but he has plenty of company.
Love that Zandy.... Musk has been single-handedly keeping the price of TSAL afloat for over 2 years now.... but I think it's like the old story of plugging the holes in the dike before the damn collapses.
Musk is very well known for his love to mass media coverage, he does what it takes to take as much credit in the media as possible, and I don't see anything wrong in it. More media coverage = more purchases.
Some of his tweets could be examined by the SEC as overstepping the CEO's role and unduly influencing the stock and shit. Musk gets away with murder, because he is a green sweetheart... The show is going to end badly nevertheless, the question is when not if... Merging 2 highly unprofitable companies, what could go wrong???
Yeah, and he kept getting bigger. Then, he went from books to everything else and now he has added movies. The difference between Bezos and Musk is that Bezos was basically financing his growth by expanding his product line and selling lots and lots of discounted, best selling books. He expanded as his revenues grew. Musk sells $100k cars and last week he said he wants to build an electric tractor trailer, an electric bus and I think he said an electric train or it could have been a utility van. I don't remember. He recently made a remark suggesting that he does not care if Tesla goes bust as long as the world turns to electric cars and he can electrify the world. Those are ambitious words, but not encouraging if you are an investor. I like Musk's ambition. But not his management style. He is like that guy from Virgin Atlantic.....Sir Richard Branson. The British guy with long hair. He started his own airline, had a record retail establishment, recording studio, races hot air balloons and he probably does more I don't know about. But Branson makes money, boatloads of it. Cool guy.