Tesla CEO Elon Musk said on Thursday, May 19, that “Tesla is on my mind 24/7,” trying to soothe investor worries about him being distracted by a Twitter deal that has depressed stocks at the electric car company.
Posting a picture tweet showing a woman (Tesla) who is upset by her boyfriend (Elon) checking out another woman (Twitter), he said, “So may seem like below, but not true.” “To be clear, I’m spending <5% (but actually) of my time on the Twitter acquisition. It ain’t rocket science!” he tweeted. “Yesterday was Giga Texas, today is Starbase. Tesla is on my mind 24/7.”
Tesla this year opened its new car factory in Texas, and Musk’s rocket company SpaceX has a launch site known as Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas.
Tesla shares have lost one third of their value since the billionaire disclosed his stake in Twitter in early April and sold $8.5 billion worth of Tesla stocks in a move seen to help finance his $44-billion Twitter deal.
Further hurting stocks are China lockdown measures that dampened Tesla’s production and an exclusion of Tesla from a widely-followed S&P sustainability index.
Tesla bull Daniel Ives, an analyst at Wedbush, on Thursday cut the target share price of Tesla due to the China production disruption and warned of “distraction risks” from Musk’s Twitter deal. Leo KoGuan, a major individual investor in Tesla, on Thursday called on the electric carmaker to buy back shares. “Tesla must announce immediately and buy back $5 billion of Tesla shares from its free cash flow this year and $10 billion from its free cash flow next year, without effecting its existing $18 billion cash reserves with ZERO debt,” KoGuan said in a Twitter message to Tesla’s head of investor relations, Martin Viecha.
Viecha was not immediately available for comment. Last year, KoGuan, the third largest individual shareholder of Tesla, said he was investing billions in Tesla because he believes in Musk’s “great mission that I share.” He said in March that he was buying more Tesla shares, not selling during the stocks’ dip.
Tesla cut from S&P 500 ESG Index
S&P Dow Jones Indices has removed electric carmaker Tesla from its widely-followed S&P 500 ESG Index, citing issues including racial discrimination claims and crashes linked to its autopilot vehicles.
Tesla chief executive Elon Musk responded with harsh tweets, including that “ESG is a scam”.
Other contributing factors to the changes, effective May 2, included Tesla’s lack of published details related to its low carbon strategy or business conduct codes, said Ms Margaret Dorn, the organisation’s head of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) indexes for North America, in an interview.
The back-and-forth over the index changes reflects a wider debate about the metrics used to judge corporate performance on ESG issues, a growing area of investing.
Source: Reuters