Musk’s Tesla overtakes Ford

Tesla’s Elon Musk poked fun at short sellers as his electric-car maker’s stock surged to a record, vaulting its market value past century-old rival Ford.

“Stormy weather in Shortville …” the Pretoria-born chief executive officer tweeted late Monday, as Tesla shares climbed as much as 5.8%. The maker of Model S sedans and Model X crossovers saw its capitalisation surge to about $48.2 billion, $3.1 billion more than Ford, the No 2 automaker in the US after General Motors.

Tesla has long been a popular target by short sellers such as Jim Chanos, who famously bet early on energy company Enron Corp’s failure – and was proved right. Short interest in Tesla has risen to 29% of its free float from a 52week low of 20% in mid-October, according to Markit data.

Tesla’s move past Ford came one day after Musk’s company reported worldwide shipments of 25 000 cars and SUVs in the first quarter, exceeding analysts’ estimates. While Ford delivered about nine times as many vehicles in just the US last month, its sales missed projections and the shares fell.

“I don’t know if people want electric cars, but people want Tesla,” said Ben Kallo, an analyst at Robert W Baird & Co.

“I’m not an Elon Musk worshipper, but people that would normally buy a Porsche are buying Teslas right now.” – Bloomberg

South Africa is seeing a “disturbing trend” of deteriorating tax compliance levels, the head of the South African Revenue Service (Sars) has warned.

While some commentators have blamed this on a stuttering economy and conflicted politics, others are pointing fingers at Sars itself, while others say fed-up taxpayers are contributing to the trend.

Contributions 'wasted'

Tax commissioner Judge Dennis Davis and Tax Ombud Judge