He needs to do a better job, judging by the 6% decline in Tesla stock and a disappointing Investor Day in Austin. Is Elon Musk spending so much time on Twitter that he is unable to operate Tesla effectively?
In-depth details about Tesla shareholders are unimpressed with Elon Musk
According to Tesla’s most recent financial report and Musk’s mushy Investor Day talk, I believe Musk should be doing a lot more to run Tesla. His Investor Day presentation reminded me of students who rush through a 5-page paper and cram four pages with unnecessary content to reach the length requirement.
To do this, I believe investors would be content for him to reduce his losses on Twitter in order to devote more time to Tesla.
Although falling short of its prior projection of 50% growth, Tesla’s fourth-quarter revenue and profit beat investors’ lower expectations. Tesla’s revenue for the quarter ending December 2022 was $24.32 billion, 37% higher than the previous year and $60 million higher than the projection from Refinitiv, a financial market data company.
Both gross margins and operating cash flow fell short. “Automotive gross margins were 25.9%, the lowest in the previous five quarters. Operational cash flow was down 29% year on year and 36% year on quarter, totaling $3.28 billion.”
Tesla anticipated 1.8 million vehicles would be produced in 2023. On Tesla’s earnings call, an analyst inquired as to why the production guidance was so weak, given that the company has been expanding production in its plants. Musk answered that the forecast is based on “some frickin’ force majeure thing” that may disrupt production.
Still, Musk remained upbeat about January’s output. “So far in January, we’ve had the greatest year-to-date orders in our history,” he told analysts. We’re currently seeing orders that are nearly double the rate of production.”
Tesla did not provide any fresh guidance. “We are expecting to accelerate production as soon as possible in keeping with the 50% compound annual growth rate objective we began guiding to in early 2021,” Tesla noted in its earnings announcement.
Meanwhile, Tesla’s stock has nearly doubled since the start of 2023.
