Tesla stock takes a big hit
Stock price falls more than 6 percent as 2 executives quit, Musk smokes joint on podcast
Tesla’s latest jaw-dropping drama unfolded Friday as the departure of two top executives and the aftermath of CEO Elon Musk’s smoking a joint on a video podcast combined for another big hit on the electric automaker’s stock price.
Tesla shares fell 6.3 percent, to close Friday at $263.24, after the company said chief accounting officer Dave Morton quit the job he had held for just shy of a month. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Tesla said Morton resigned on Sept. 4, the same day he put in his notice.
Morton, who had joined Tesla on Aug. 6, insisted he had no quibble with the company’s direction. But amid a month in which Musk blew up social media for — in succession — musing about
taking Tesla private, labeling one of his critics a pedophile, and conducting the bizarre podcast interview with comedian Joe Rogan, Morton indicated in the filing that working at Tesla had become too stressful.
“The level of public attention placed on the company, as well as the pace within the company, have exceeded my expectations,” Morton said. “As a result, this caused me to reconsider my future.”
Morton’s departure adds to the recent drumbeat of concern about Tesla’s future and Musk’s fitness to lead the company.
“If Elon’s relaxed attitude is a short-term positive, it is at least balanced out by the departure of chief accounting officer Dave Morton as a potential long-term negative,” said Gene Munster, managing partner with Loup Ventures. “While Morton reiterated that Tesla’s books are in order, any sort of C-level departure is a negative.”
A day after Morton joined Tesla, Musk surprised everyone by tweeting that he wanted to take the company private for $420 a share. The ensuing backlash and uncertainty lasted for more than two weeks, until Musk said on Aug. 24 that Tesla would remain public. The company’s shares have since fallen by 18.5 percent.
CNBC reported that Morton decided to leave Tesla after he felt neither Musk, nor other Tesla officials, would listen to him about accounting details related to taking the company private.
And just this week, Musk reignited his attack on British cave diver Vern Unsworth, calling the diver involved in the cave rescue of 12 Thai boy soccer players and their coach a “child rapist” in an email exchange with Buzzfeed News. He had earlier labeled Unsworth “pedo guy,” then grudgingly — and apparently insincerely — apologized.
As if Morton’s departure wasn’t bad enough, Tesla human resources director Gabrielle Toledano told Bloomberg News that she wouldn’t return to the company from a leave of absence.
Those departures alone probably were enough to get Wall Street worked up about Tesla. Musk didn’t help matters by appearing Thursday on “The Joe Rogan Experience.”
During the freewheeling, 2 ½-hour-long conversation, Musk sipped from a glass of whiskey, brandished a samurai sword and said that instead of being referred to as a “business magnate” he should be called a “business magnet.”
In light of his serving as CEO of SpaceX, overseeing digging of a transportation tunnel under Los Angeles and selling flamethrowers via his Boring Co., Musk tried to allay concerns that he has too much on his plate — albeit with a sense of humor.
“When I watch you doing all these things,” Rogan asked. “I’m like, how does this mother (expletive) have all this time and all this energy and all these ideas, and then people just let him do these things?”
Musk replied, “Because I’m an alien.”
Musk also sounded like a man looking to make peace with the world, as he told Rogan it’s “easy to demonize people,” but when you do “you’re usually wrong about it,” offering his belief that “people should be nicer to each other.”
And then came the pot incident, in which Musk took a hit off a cigarette that Rogan said was laced with marijuana.
While pot is legal in California, where Rogan’s podcast took place, Munster said the CEO’s decision to smoke in a public forum could be seen as unbecoming of the boss of a company with market capitalization of almost $45 billion.
“At times, Musk appears to be working against himself,” Munster said. “The use of recreational drugs, legal or not, goes against the unspoken rules of being a public CEO.”
In an effort to possibly stanch the negative attention focused on Tesla, the company said late Friday that it promoted Jerome Guillen to president of its automotive division, with responsibility for all of Tesla’s automotive operations and program management. Guillen previously had led the ramp up in Tesla’s Model 3 production efforts.
Musk made Guillen’s appointment public in a blog post that included several other promotions at the company.
Tesla didn’t return a request for comment about the executive changes, nor Musk’s appearance on Rogan’s podcast.