Tag: Elon Musk

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After drama, Tesla posts ‘historic’ quarterly report

Elon Musk
Tesla CEO presides over the handover of the first Model 3 cars in August 2017. (Tesla via YouTube)

Tesla shares jumped more than 10 percent in after-hours trading today after the controversial electric-car company posted a surprisingly positive quarterly report, including a profit rather than a loss.

Adjusted net income for the third quarter amounted to $312 million, which translated into earnings of $2.90 a share. Analysts had expected a loss of around 19 cents per share.

Total revenue hit $6.8 billion, exceeding expectations of $6.3 billion. And Tesla’s cash on hand increased by $731 million, even though Tesla repaid $82.5 million in bonds during the quarter.

That cash position could take some of the pressure off Tesla, which had been burning through its reserves by the billions during what CEO Elon Musk called “production hell” for the company’s Model 3 electric car.

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SEC settlement buoys Tesla share prices

Tesla Model 3
Tesla has been hustling to deliver Model 3 cars at the end of its financial third quarter. (Tesla Photo)

Tesla’s share price jumped today as dramatically as it fell on Sept. 28, thanks largely to this weekend’s settlement of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s complaints against the company and its CEO, Elon Musk.

After falling 14 percent on Sept. 28, the stock rose 17 percent today, leaving the closely watched price at $310.70 at the close. That’s above the level it held during Sept. 27’s trading hours, just before the SEC announced that it was charging Musk with securities fraud.

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Elon Musk agrees to resign as Tesla chairman

Elon Musk
Elon Musk in Seattle in 2015. (GeekWire Photo / Taylor Soper)

By Todd Bishop and Alan Boyle

Elon Musk has agreed to step down as Tesla’s chairman for three years but will remain CEO of the electric car maker, under the terms of documents filed today to settle a securities fraud case brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Musk will also pay a $20 million penalty to settle charges sparked by his Aug. 7 tweets about a plan to take Tesla private. Tesla will pay an additional $20 million, the SEC said in a news release.

In addition, Tesla agreed to appoint two new independent directors to its board, establish a new committee of independent directors and implement procedures to oversee Musk’s communications via Twitter and other avenues.

Neither Musk nor Tesla admitted wrongdoing as part of the agreement, according to court papers. But Musk will be required to comply with Tesla’s new procedures for social-media posts, updates on the company’s website and blog, and statements made in news releases or during investor calls.

Tesla would have to give “pre-approval of any such written communications that contain, or reasonably could contain, information material to the company or its shareholders,” according to court documents.

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Elon Musk calls SEC charges ‘unjustified’

Tesla CEO Elon Musk says he’s “deeply saddened” by the claims against him. (Tesla via YouTube)

Update: Elon Musk and Tesla settle with SEC.

Tesla’s billionaire CEO and chairman, Elon Musk, is calling the Securities and Exchange Commission’s fraud claims against him “unjustified” after reportedly passing up a settlement deal that would have temporarily forced him from a leadership post.

“This unjustified action by the SEC leaves me deeply saddened and disappointed,” Musk said in a statement distributed Sept. 27 after the SEC filed its civil complaint. “I have always taken action in the best interests of truth, transparency and investors. Integrity is the most important value in my life and the facts will show I never compromised this in any way.”

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SEC charges Tesla’s Elon Musk with securities fraud

Elon Musk
Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks to shareholders in June. (Tesla via YouTube)

Update: Elon Musk and Tesla settle with SEC.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged Tesla’s billionaire CEO and chairman, Elon Musk, with securities fraud over a series of controversial tweets focusing on the electric-car company’s future financial status.

If the SEC is fully successful in arguing its claims, Musk could be barred from serving as an officer or director of Tesla or any other publicly traded company.

The complaint in federal court focuses on what the SEC calls “false and misleading tweets” about a potential transaction to buy up Tesla’s publicly traded shares at a premium price of $420 and take the company private.

“Funding secured,” Musk said in Aug. 7’s most controversial tweet.

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Tesla stock declines after report of criminal probe

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Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk talks about the Model 3 during its 2016 unveiling. (Credit: Tesla)

Tesla shares fell by as much as 6.5 percent today after Bloomberg News reported that the electric-car company was the subject of a criminal investigation by the Justice Department, focusing on CEO Elon Musk’s claims that he had secured the funding to take Tesla private.

The “funding secured” comment, posted on Twitter on Aug. 7, has also sparked increased scrutiny for civil action by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

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Japanese billionaire signs up for SpaceX moon trip

Maezawa and Musk
Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk strike a pose at SpaceX’s headquarters in Hawthorne, Calif. (Yusaku Maezawa via Twitter)

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk today introduced Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa as the first paying customer for a trip around the moon.

“Finally I can tell you that ‘I choose to go to the moon,’” Maezawa said, echoing President John F. Kennedy’s famous phrase.

Maezawa, 42, founded a mail-order retail business called Start Today in 1998, which spawned what’s now Japan’s largest fashion retail website, known as Zozotown. His net worth is estimated at more than $3 billion.

He’s made a name for himself as a musician and art collector as well as an entrepreneur. During tonight’s big reveal at SpaceX’s headquarters in Hawthorne, Calif., Maezawa said he intended to invite six to eight artists from around the world, on the level of the late Pablo Picasso or Michael Jackson, to go around the moon with him.

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Tesla stock drops after Elon Musk smokes weed

Elon Musk
Elon Musk smokes a cigarette described as containing tobacco and marijuana during a chat on “The Joe Rogan Experience,” a popular YouTube talk show. (Joe Rogan Experience via YouTube)

Tesla share prices took a hit amounting to as much as 10 percent today, after billionaire CEO Elon Musk took a hit off what looked like as a marijuana stogie during a YouTube talk show. The controversial electric-car company was also hit with the departure of two key executives.

First, about that joint: The toke came in the midst of Musk’s appearance on “The Joe Rogan Experience,” hosted by Rogan, a stand-up comedian, reality-TV star and martial-arts commentator who’s built up a huge following for his video podcast. As of midday today, more than 1.6 million users had checked out his chat with Musk.

The 2.5-hour chat touched upon a wide range of topics — including the Boring Company’s foray into tunneling and flamethrowers, his long-running concerns about artificial intelligence, his vision to merge brains with software through the Neuralink venture, his plan to use SpaceX’s yet-to-be-built BFR rocket for suborbital point-to-point travel, and his idea for an electric-powered airplane that takes off vertically and would be capable of supersonic speeds.

But when Rogan lit up a joint more than two hours into the interview, it was the puff of smoke that sparked headlines.

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The Riveter’s CEO and Elon Musk weigh in on stress

Elon Musk and Amy Nelson
Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s emotional interview struck a chord with Amy Nelson, the CEO and co-founder of The Riveter, a venture that created women-centric coworking spaces in Seattle and other locales. (Photos: TED via Youtube; The Riveter)

After Tesla CEO Elon Musk got emotional during a market-moving interview this month, Amy Nelson, CEO and founder of The Riveter, says she can understand the kind of stress he’s under.

“You’ve got a few more years of running a company under your belt, but trust me: I feel your pain,” Nelson, one of the leaders in Seattle’s community of female business founders, wrote last week in an essay posted on Forbes’ website.

The essay addressed a follow-up question sparked by Musk’s candor about the stresses of running a company: Can women CEOs afford to be as candid as Musk was? Nelson’s take: They can’t.

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Elon Musk says Tesla will remain a public company

Elon Musk
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has had second thoughts about a “go-private” plan for the company. (BTV via YouTube)

After more than two weeks of discussions, Tesla CEO Elon Musk says feedback from shareholders and experts has convinced him that “the better path is for Tesla to remain public” rather than becoming privately held.

Musk stirred up the financial world on Aug. 7 when he said he was considering a plan to buy up the electric car company’s publicly traded shares at a premium price of $420 a share. A major source of controversy was Musk’s claim that funding had already been secured for what could have been a multibillion-dollar stock purchase program.

The “funding secured” tweet drew skepticism from stock analysts and heightened scrutiny from federal regulators.

In tonight’s update to Tesla’s website, Musk said that most of Tesla’s existing shareholders wanted the company to remain public, and that going private could have forced some institutional investors to divest their stakes. Retail investors might have been forced to sell their stock due to limits on the number of shareholders allowed for a privately held company.

“The sentiment, in a nutshell, was ‘please don’t do this,’ ” Musk wrote.

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