STOP HIM NOW

Matt Drudge headlined Musk this evening, capping off a multi-pronged effort to dethrone King of Tesla. I find it all rather amusing how every Tesla car accident makes front page news and how Musk’s sanity is called into question all the time, mostly by zealots and short sellers.

Granted, his genius has given license to a wide array of eccentricities. Still, the people who are attacking him, mostly, are lamentable sub-human creatures, underserving of attention, but he gives it to them nonetheless. I cannot fathom why he does; then again, I’ve never had the mental capacity to build a fucking space rocket either. He’s wired much differently than 99.9% of humans.

Cut through the smoke and these are the facts about Musk and Tesla.

In 2010, sales were ~$30m per quarter. Now sales are $3.4b per quarter.

The stock is up 10x since then and higher by 7% over the past 6 months, 200bps better than the SPY.

With a market cap of $51b, I find it incredibly humorous to even imply that Tesla is in financial trouble. The fucking company can raise $5b tomorrow in a mildly dilutive secondary, and not even break a sweat. Why, the stock would probably trade higher on the news.

Nevertheless, here’s the entertainment, courtesy of the internet and the NY Post.

• Musk’s calling in a request to Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune to make public the $6 million-plus in previously anonymous donations that Musk made to the environmental group.
• His purpose, as reported by Bloomberg, was to deflect flak for donating $38,900 to a pro-Republican PAC last quarter.
  Musk got around to apologizing to the “pedo guy” on Wednesday, acknowledging the rescuer’s criticism of the mini-submarine Musk sent to assist in the soccer team’s rescue does “not justify my actions against him.”
  Musk’s sincerity was suspect, however, as the “pedo guy” had already threatened to sue.
• Musk’s 22.2 million Twitter followers give the entrepreneur a bully pulpit that he ill-advisedly used this month to dress down a blog writer Linette Lopez.
  On July 5, he tweeted, “@lopezlinette has published several false articles about Tesla, including a doozy where she claimed Tesla scrapped more batteries than our total S,X &3 production number, which is physically impossible.”
  He also accused the Business Insider writer of being motivated by short-seller Jim Chanos, whom Musk called “Tesla’s most prominent short-seller.”
  “Her articles print Chanos’ view verbatim,” he added. “This is not journalism.”
• Musk doesn’t limit his wrath to individual journalists, which is why on May 23 he said he’d take on the entire industry by developing a fake news/honest journalism scorecard.
  “Going to create a site where the public can rate the core truth of any article & track the credibility score over time of each journalist, editor & publication,” he tweeted. “Thinking of calling it Pravda…”
  “The holier-than-thou hypocrisy of big media companies who lay claim to the truth, but publish only enough to sugarcoat the lie, is why the public no longer respects them,” he continued.
• Many believe the cloud over Musk’s head took shape during a May 2 analyst earnings call.
  “Boring, bonehead questions are not cool,” he said in response to a question about Tesla’s projected capital expenditures. “These questions are so dry. They’re killing me.”

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