That was my and
@neroden's take as well - and it clearly explained the rush to control the narrative: according to later SEC documents Elon tweeted the $420 tweet from his private jet, with minimal input from other board members.
Back then Elon probably already suspected that Q3/Q4'2018 is going to be fantastic, because they knew their cost base and had a lot of pent-up demand. This was the report that I believe Elon read and which might have increased urgency and triggered the $420 tweet:
And prior August 7 we did notice weird TSLA buying pressure here on TMC, which started after the July 4th bear attack that drove the price below $300:
Note that on the $420 tweet day the price was already at around $350, $365 intraday, fueled by Q2 earnings that already showed a positive inherent cash flow (modulo working capital fluctuation) and the Saudi speculation, which was later on confirmed to be a 4% stake in Tesla.
Also note that "$420" might have been a joke in part, but it was also
exactly a +20% buy-out premium over the ~$350 price levels on August 7, so a fair offer. (350*1.2 = 420)
Note how the next 2 weeks after the $420 tweet were spent (successfully) organizing a $20b buy-out consortium that emphatically did
not include the Saudi PIF. The Saudis also later on hedged (shorted) their stake and invested in another EV maker, so the relationship clearly cooled down.
Bears immediately hung on to "The $420 tweet was a lie, it's impossible to take Tesla private!" false narrative and started shorting big time, helped by institutionals and eventually the SEC itself.
In hindsight, had the Saudi PIF taken over Tesla and taken it private, we'd possibly not have seen the $400+ levels of today.
So SEC confrontation aside, Elon did Tesla investors a big favor by making Tesla "uninvestable" for a year or so, this avoided the Saudi takeover (the bone-saw memes would never stop ...), and it also kept VW-Porsche from taking over Tesla at the $180 price levels earlier this year, which I'm sure they were looking at...
The German "Manager Magazin" published a well sourced piece that also quoted members of the Porsche family bemoaning Tesla's high share price ... when it was below $200:
Tesla: Daimler, BMW und Volkswagen machen Jagd auf Elon Musk
"Hunting down Tesla"
"Electro-visionary Elon Musk fails due to the downsides of the auto business. Important investors lose confidence, the German premium providers are attacking.
Tesla is ready for a takeover."
...
"The Tesla dream still glows in Diess, according to top VW managers familiar with his thinking. He believes that Volkswagen can benefit from Tesla's battery and, above all, software expertise. "He would get in immediately if he could," says one of his top people.
The money is there too, for the beginning a participation is enough. It was more difficult with the approval of the major shareholders, the families Porsche and Piëch."
Right after they leaked this to Manager Magazin, Porsche family members "denied" the report:
I think they wanted to drive the price down a bit more by creating the impression that despite Diess being the super best friend ever of Elon, they are still not interested in bailing out Tesla - and then gobble up Tesla for the EV tech.
Then early September, they were on again:
I think they were still under the impression that the Taycan would pressure Tesla, and that Tesla has cash flow troubles and needs a bailout.
Lucky for us, VW-Porsche miscalculated, Q2 already drove the share price to $250 levels, and Q3 financials started the rally to $420 ... and Elon never had any interest in selling Tesla's assets to VW.
I don't think VW-Porsche has the money to take over Tesla at these price levels - and Elon would not agree to a one-sided partnership that gives Tesla's software crown jewels to Volkswagen - which I think VW had in mind in the summer.
So yeah, IMO Tesla investors dodged
two takeover/dilution bullets in the span of a single year ...
The possibility of takeovers needs to be understood too when buying options: in a takeover much of the time value of an option can go to zero, which wipes out deep out of the money option holders.
I was countering the argument that the fact that there's two pedestals means that the car is supposed to for some reason have two separate charge ports that can be used simultaneously (which would be ridiculous design regardless)
