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CEO Elon Musk: Tesla will remain a public company
In a blog post published Friday evening, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that he would change course from his sudden announcement three weeks ago and would actually keep Tesla as a publicly-traded company.
"It's apparent that most of Tesla's existing shareholders believe we are better off as a public company," he wrote. "Additionally, a number of institutional shareholders have explained that they have internal compliance issues that limit how much they can invest in a private company. There is also no proven path for most retail investors to own shares if we were private."
Musk noted that he had met with the Tesla board of directors on Thursday and "let them know that I believe the better path is for Tesla to remain public. The board indicated that they agree."
See also: Analysis: Why Elon Musk abandoned his plan to take Tesla private
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26 2018, @03:47PM (8 children)
Someone did not get their funding.
(Score: 2) by SparkyGSX on Sunday August 26 2018, @04:00PM (7 children)
Yeah but someone may still get their well-deserved ass-whooping from the SEC. Musk is turning into a abrasive little brad real quick.
If you do what you did, you'll get what you got
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26 2018, @04:14PM (6 children)
Sure, maybe Elon behaved in poor taste, and perhaps the "rules" warrant a slap from the SEC (I doubt it), but it would actually be terrible for the small investor if the SEC did anything damaging to Elon Musk—people haven't invested in Tesla; they've invested in Elon Musk, and if the SEC tries to protect the little guy by admonishing Musk, then the SEC will ironically just end up irritating a billionaire and fucking over the investments of that little guy.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by SparkyGSX on Sunday August 26 2018, @05:05PM (3 children)
What he did is clearly stock manipulation. The SEC doesn't, and shouldn't, care about what investors would be hurt by dealing punishments to people who break the rules. He broke the rules, screwed people over (short-selling is perfectly legal and one could argue actually good for the company), and shouldn't get a free pass.
If he does get away with it, what would stop him from doing it again?
If your dog shits on the carpet and you praise him for it, can you really be surprised if he does it again?
If you do what you did, you'll get what you got
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26 2018, @05:18PM (2 children)
Get the government out of stock market. The bankers engineered the Great Depression to buy up assets for pennies on the dollar, and the Federal Reserve's policies lengthened and deepened the economic horror show.
Next, the elites conspired with the federal government to "protect" Main Street with a huge, intrusive regulatory bureaucracy and rules for companies that want to sell equity to anyone, and then they restricted the common folk from even participating in "private" equity with their own resources.
The result? The rich can still hit it big, but the poor merely get the chance at beating the Federal Reserve's targeted inflation, while their "savings" dwindle in purchasing power year after year.
You want a smart country with shrewd investors? Caveat Emptor is the only way to push society in that direction.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26 2018, @06:43PM (1 child)
Still unable to admit that this is Just How Capitalism Works.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26 2018, @06:59PM
How is it Capitalism to tell someone that he can't use "his own" money to buy shares in a company?
Government corrupts capitalists, not the other way around.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday August 26 2018, @06:04PM (1 child)
This is what drugs do to you. Elon Musk was totally fine until he started doing LSD and Marihuana, and now he is hallucinating and clinically insane. If you need a reminder why you shouldn't smoke pot, then look at Musk's bizzarre behavior. He is truly off the deep-end.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26 2018, @07:59PM
I don't think it is proper to blame it on drugs. If you look, he has always been kind of a dick, an ego monster, if you will. The thing about it is that while he was doing good stuff the Cult of Elon and the press did the necessary fellatio on him to keep him satiated. But he needed more and more to satisfy his needs and people eventually started to call him on his crap. So the Ego monster was no longer being fed and is now turning on its former caregivers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26 2018, @04:29PM (3 children)
"There is also no proven path for most retail investors to own shares if we were private."
how profound, wizard..
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26 2018, @04:46PM (2 children)
What most people don't know—and what Elon Musk probably really didn't know—is that the federal government only allows private companies to sell equity to what are known as "Accredited Investors", who are basically quite rich people; in practice, this means that only a rich person is allowed by the government to choose to invest his money in a private company.
Do you get it?
Elon Musk probably thought "Fuck all this nonsense I have to deal with, such as short-selling and quarterly reporting. I'll take it private, paying retail investors and a handsome little premium to do so, and then they can just buy our private, relatively unregulated shares instead if they want."
Well, guess what. Even if you are a bachelor who owns a $16 million dollar home and who has a steady annual income of $195k, you can't buy his private shares; you don't qualify as an "accredited investor"; to be an accredited investor, you need to have a net worth of $1 million—not including your primary residence, thanks to the Democrats—or you need to be making at least $200k per year for the last 2 years, with the expectation of making at least as much in the current year.
So, that's profound. It turns out most Americans aren't free to invest their own damned money as the see fit; private investment in the next big thing is reserved for the elite.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday August 26 2018, @05:05PM (1 child)
The arguments against it boil down to "The little guy will get scammed/lose all their money!"
At least "equity crowdfunding" is real now, right? Right?!
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26 2018, @05:30PM
Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:
Regulation A offerings places limits on the value of securities issuer may offer and individuals can invest through crowdfunding intermediaries. An issuer may sell up to $1,000,000 of its securities per 12 months, and, depending upon their net worth and income, investors will be permitted to invest up to $100,000 in crowdfunding issues per 12 months. An independent financial statement review by a CPA firm is required for raises $100,000–500,000 and an independent financial statement audit by a CPA firm is required for raises over $500,000.
Regulation CF offerings would prescribe rules governing the offer and sale of securities under new Section 4(a)(6) of the Securities Act of 1933. Individual investments in a 12-month period are limited to the greater of $2,000 or 5 percent of annual income or net worth, if annual income or net worth of the investor is less than $100,000; and 10% of annual income or net worth (not to exceed an amount sold of $100,000), if both annual income and net worth of the investor is $100,000 or more (these amounts are to be adjusted for inflation at least every five years); and transactions must be conducted through an intermediary that either is registered as a broker or is registered as a new type of entity called a "funding portal."
Regulation CF went into effect on May 16, 2016.
Each state has its own rules, some of which preclude any such investment.
America. Land of the Free.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by requerdanos on Sunday August 26 2018, @04:50PM (7 children)
Tesla is saying, here, something along the lines of: "Everyone disagreed with me, and if I took my ball and went home, people said they would stop giving me money. It's quite unfortunate." Not a glowing beacon of insight. Another commenter in this thread summed it up by saying [soylentnews.org] simply "Duh."
But something Musk said initially [tesla.com] in an e-mail to employees when he wanted to take Tesla private is still pretty insightful and important:
The pressure to sacrifice future growth and development in order to increase the coming quarterly results, even slightly, is probably a "bad thing" for any company, and an especially bad thing for a company that is pushing into new, undeveloped technologies like COTS futuristic cars and COTS inexpensive space travel. These things can and should benefit all of humanity, but only if Tesla collectively ignores the fit-pitching of Wall Street analysts who say things like "Tesla [TSLA] misses estimates by 0.2% Zomg sky falling!"
And that can be a problem for Tesla, because SEC regulations with the force of law require acting in the interest of shareholders, and often that's not defined by "having a good long-term plan" nor "doing the right thing", but rather by the gold standard of "did slightly better this quarter."
Should Tesla be private? Yes (avoids this problem) and No (probably couldn't exist without investment from shareholders). But either way, fighting for the long view is the right thing.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26 2018, @05:01PM (6 children)
Perhaps you missed the reply to "duh" [soylentnews.org], but it counters the thrust of your argument.
Why can't shareholders invest in his private company? Well, because the government doesn't allow them to do so; it's not being private that is the problem, but rather the government's restrictions on what people can do with their own damn money.
I'd much rather invest in a private Tesla that only reports annually (and privately) and is much less affected by short sellers. But I can't. Because I'm not rich enough, according to the government.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Sunday August 26 2018, @05:48PM (1 child)
I didn't miss that reply, and it was irrelevant with respect to my statements about the fact that "The pressure to sacrifice future growth and development in order to increase the coming quarterly results, even slightly, is probably a 'bad thing'".
In fact, that reply is about government restrictions on investing in private companies. I said Tesla should not be private because it "probably couldn't exist without investment from shareholders", something strengthened by a post pointing out that investment would be hindered were the company not public.
Did you read my post? Did you read your own?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26 2018, @05:59PM
Elon wasn't wrong. The government is wrong. The government is the problem, not Elon's sense of what needs to be done.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26 2018, @07:38PM (1 child)
Because that's not what going private means. There are plenty of ways of investing in private companies, they're just not as convenient as using an exchange to buy and sell small amounts of the company.
My dad is a part owner in a bar and the process of selling his share would be rather involved. As opposed to his investments in publicly traded companies which take a matter of minutes to go through the full process.
Companies are rarely willing to accept investors on such a small scale unless it's via stocks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26 2018, @08:15PM
That's what Elon is saying: "There is also no proven path for most retail investors to own shares if we were private."
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday August 27 2018, @06:06AM (1 child)
> but rather the government's restrictions on what people can do with their own damn money.
Maybe that's because the government grew tired of having to deal with the nasty side-effects when you have absolute freedom to give of take money against empty promises...
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 27 2018, @03:37PM
Do you even government, bro?
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Sunday August 26 2018, @06:23PM (5 children)
Elon Musk is just like me [warplife.com].
OT: The only way I can find my own pages anymore is to google site:warplife.com keyword. Please to recommend a website search package that works really well with hand-coded static HTML.
If you recommend Apache Solr I'm going to hurt your children.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday August 26 2018, @06:24PM
Tweet your writing at him.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26 2018, @06:33PM (2 children)
Come on, man. Roll your own.
You don't need some "search package".
(Score: 3, Funny) by JoeMerchant on Sunday August 26 2018, @07:18PM (1 child)
Better still, have the general public who uses your site pass their search queries as regex - that'll stratify your user base real quick.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/24/7408365/
(Score: 3, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday August 27 2018, @09:37AM
$ bzgrep "GET /computer/ " access.log_*.bz2 | grep Jul/2018 | wc
1095
It really started to take off when I posted Soggy Jobs in the Caltech Alumni Facebook Group. I'll join the UCSC Facebook Group Real Soon Now.
Just today I started my Cafe section [soggy.jobs]. I also have a Corporate page [soggy.jobs] for the Cafe section.
Word on the street is that Starbucks hires more coders than Amazon.
I'll start my Fast Food section next week. That I've chosen Fast Food and Cafes as my first industries after our biz is due to my observations of Facebook's and Reddit's employment groups. The people who most-desperately need work are having the very hardest time actually obtaining them - entry-level and minimum wage workers.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday August 26 2018, @07:03PM
I was about to say: Elon is portraying the public image of a schizo waffling distracted overworked anti-leader. It's one way of getting free P.R., levels of buzz you can't buy, and buzz/P.R. rarely hurts, even if it appears bad.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/24/7408365/
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26 2018, @11:03PM
Then everyone gets to be pissed.
Cant be making money for Musk, hes got nothing to lose really.