Blog post: Staying Public Key excerpt: “After considering all of these factors, I met with Tesla’s Board of Directors yesterday and let them know that I believe the better path is for Tesla to remain public. The Board indicated that they agree.”
1 This is great news because I have a sizable Tesla holding in an IRA. All things considered, it is also best for the company IMO. 2 Elon HAS to stay off Twitter! It's absolutely ridiculous how the last two weeks have gone down. This titanic-sized mess was completely avoidable.
I don’t agree. I just think he has to be more careful about making major business announcements on Twitter. Run stuff by lawyers first. It’s not clear the SEC will take any enforcement action in this case, but he can avoid the risk of running afoul of the SEC just by sending a draft tweet to some lawyers. Oh, and don’t tweet anything mean or accusatory toward anyone. Be kind or just mute people. If he wants to address a factual matter or dispute (like whether his sub would work), he can politely make his case. He often does do just that, and I think it’s a good use of Twitter.
Elon is a Twitter-holic. Expecting him to tweet responsibly is not realistic because he just can't help himself. Abstinence is the answer. The pedo, going private and funding secured comments are inexcusable for someone in his position. I'd like to see him go cold turkey for 12 months and demolish Tesla's detractors with performance, not rhetoric.
Yeah, I agree, being long and (usually) patient about TSLA share price, but I can’t deny that I’m in a better mood when the trend is positive. A more relevant question might be “does this decision strengthen the lawsuits by the shorts against Musk?”
Thinking longer term: I'm going to point out that we now have fair warning into Musk's thinking on this. He's wanted to go private all along, since shortly after going public. He still wants to. The Board doesn't want him to, and major institutional investors asked him not to (think of ARK Invest with their $4000 price target), and he had not thought about how complicated the process would be or how many people would get forced out (had not done his research).... but his desire to get off the public markets hasn't gone away. Suppose in six months that Tesla is profitable, deleveraging, delivering 10000 Model 3s per week, and Musk doesn't need to spend 16-hour days at the factory to keep things working. Suppose also that the disinformation campaign is still running at top speed and the stock price is still well under $400 (we all expect this won't be the case, but suppose it is). At this point, would you be surprised if Musk makes another, better thought-out attempt to go private? Because I wouldn't. We have fair warning as to Musk's desires now, and he has proven patient and dogged in trying to pursue his desires. I consider this... a downside. It's something I have to tuck in the back of my mind as a possibility.
I still think the automotive piece could and should be sold to Apple for an absurd amount of cash. My only concern would be them screwing up the autonomous portion. Tesla should be an energy company, constantly spinning off and/or selling game changing consumer products.
Too early to dispense with automotive. Automotive is the volume that keeps Panasonic interested. Without automotive, Panasonic can pick and choose who to work with or go it alone.
I don't think the going private will be looked at again. The share price will be too high and by then Tesla will be self-capitalizing so the FUD won't matter as much. The investors will still have the same opinion and retail will still not be able to convert to private.
I certainly hope so. If the stock price is somehow kept down even after a year of profits, however, then remember my words.