Tesla Inc (Nasdaq: TSLA) CEO Elon Musk took to Twitter on Friday to explain his behavior on the company’s first-quarter earnings call that sent TSLA stock tanking 5.6 percent on Thursday, saying that he lashed out at analysts who were “on the opposite side of investors.”
Tesla stock rose more than 1 percent on Friday morning, but has a long way to to before making up this week’s losses.
The drama started on Wednesday afternoon when Musk blew off questions about capital requirements and Model 3 reservations from Sanford Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi and RBC analyst Joseph Spak, choosing to instead answer questions from 25-year-old YouTuber and Tesla investor Galileo Russell.
[See: 5 of the Best Stocks to Buy for May.]
On the call Musk, called Sacconaghi’s inquiries “boring, bonehead questions” and said Spak’s questions were “so dry” they were “killing” him.
On Friday morning, Musk addressed the controversy on Twitter.
“The ‘dry’ questions were not asked by investors, but rather by two sell-side analysts who were trying to justify their Tesla short thesis. They are actually on the *opposite* side of investors. HyperChange represented actual investors, so I switched to them,” Musk says in a tweet.
Bernstein currently has a “market-perform” rating for TSLA stock, and RBC has a “sector-perform” rating for Tesla.
In six additional tweets, Musk again said the two analysts represented “a short-seller thesis,” said Sacconaghi’s question had already been answered in the earnings release and Spak’s question was “absurd” because Tesla already has approximately 500,000 Model 3 reservations “despite no advertising & no cars in showrooms.”
Musk concluded his twitter rant with a message to Tesla short sellers.
“Oh and uh short burn of the century comin soon. Flamethrowers should arrive just in time,” Musk said, in a reference to a recent Twitter stunt in which Musk sold flamethrowers to raise $10 million for his The Boring Company.
Sacconaghi addressed Musk’s “bizarre antics” on CNBC Thursday.
“This is a financial analyst call, this is not a TED talk,” Sacconaghi said. “I think generally speaking, when CEOs are evasive around number questions, that is worrisome.”
[See: 7 of the Best Stocks to Buy for 2018.]
Sacconaghi also said long-term visibility on Tesla Model 3 production and margins is still low, and the company “appeared” to push back its target date for achieving Model 3 gross margins of 25 percent by between six and nine months.
In addition to the “market-perform” rating, Bernstein has a $265 price target for TSLA stock. RBC has a $280 target for Tesla.
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Can Elon Musk Soothe Spooked Tesla Inc (TSLA) Investors? originally appeared on usnews.com
