A little education for Spurious at why multiple high level finance departures at a stock-compensation giant like Tesla is a very high probability sign that someone is very wrong (usually fraud, sometimes seeing obvious imminent bankruptcy):
Yup. Generally high level finance executives don't bail and let all their options become worthless just as a company is supposedly first reaching mainstream production and profitability and massive revenue growth.

Also that letter (from a hedge fund who just pushed in short) is a good read to understand what the sane shorts think.

With Musk's Model 3 cockup, Tesla are going to come up about $8 billion short this year, by Musk's own production projections, and have $19 billion in enforceable contractual obligations to pay (regardless of production or sale levels) to Panasonic and suppliers over the next couple of years. Their debt will likely be further downgraded into imminent default status in the not too distant future. It's on the brink now and Moody's said the outlook was negative.

Musk admitted his entire bull thesis (that he can out-manufacture the majors with robotics and his super clever magic rocket sauce) is dead. One or both of two things is true:

- Musk is incompetent at mass manufacturing, delegation, management, planning

- There is little extra fat in the car industry - given that it's 4% of the entire global GDP output, the smartest and most experienced minds have long since optimized away any possible improvements.

Both are probably true. One certainly is. And one is enough that the Tesla bull case is finished. If there is no fat or they are incompetent at the careful rational low-error-tolerance bureaucracy needed to survive as a car company, then they can't turn a profit. Given that, and that they lack the supplier chains and quality control and corporate culture and 100 billion+ economy of scale deployed capital, they die quickly when credit dries up and there's a bank run, usually the next recession but I'd say much sooner unless Musk beats his own production estimates (has he ever?). The best case now is that they turn into just another car manufacturer - for which they're already overpriced.

There's no bull case any more. Their super magic robot air-friction-fast hot sauce is dead. Their energy products are a total failure (3-10% of bull projections!), and consist of repackaged Samsung and Panasonic cells sold below cost. SCTY is a failure which they've been shutting down. Autonomous driving is a total failure, and they lack the research funds anyway. What else is there?

man TSLA up bigly today when QQQ is down. That's GOOD NEWS for Elon Musk imo

There's your answer. Dat stock price, bro.

Dumb question: why have no activist hedge funds done a public short yet, ala Ackman and Herbalife? Seems ripe for it.

There are. Einhorn and Chanos are known to be extensively short. Mark Spiegel and the people at Vilas Capital are very public about their short on TSLA.

worked out great for Ackman, not sure why folks aren't following in his footsteps here

I really don't want to argue that much about this particular subject but you take such an extreme stance and people need to be aware that it's a nonsensical position.

CFO left after 1.5 years.
CAO left after roughly 2 years.

They have joined the company while it was already well-established. You make it sound like they had humongous option packages that will make them billionaires if Tesla works out. This is hardly going to be the case. They will have had tiny packages with the regular 4 year vesting (potentially a bit longer given their positions). Anything they've left on the table at Tesla will probably be picked up by their next gig.

VP of Finance left after 5 years.

Her package has already vested and she will fully participate in the upside. Not sure how large her package was, it's a bit difficult to estimate given her join date. She is now a CFO and will most likely have secured a more attractive package at Topia.

Spurious,

None of what you wrote really discredits that idea that multiple people on the finance side leaving in a short time period is a major warning sign. I suggest you look at the turnover in other large companies for C-level finance/accounting execs and upper middle management.

I'd suggest gaining some basic familiarity with business before writing something that nutso again.

Those are two different arguments. A lot of people leaving the finance department is one argument. That is a lot more coherent and makes sense.

The argument that people are leaving large option packages behind before Tesla skyrockets is another argument. That makes a lot less sense and is actually bull****.

I'd be interested in the turnover at other companies, maybe you have a source. Most of the time, this doesn't become public. Volkswagen replaced the CFO at roughly the same time as Tesla and I assume they've replaced some people in that department as well.
It comes at a critical time for Tesla and it's by no means a good sign, but it's absolutely blown out of proportion.

Man, this is sad, you have zero real world experience, almost everything you posted is either completely stupid or completely disproven by reading the proxy statements


Do u know what a proxy statement is?

Yeah except he above is all bull****, fairy tales made up in your head. If something makes Tesla look bad, you make up intellectual constructs where they no longer look bad, and take them as true. It's weird.

Anyway, this is a matter of public record. CFO Jason Wheeler got a $500K/year salary and $15 million in initial equity vesting over four years, which is a very generous level of compensation for a CFO. He left it on the table, leaving the day before their 10K came out. As Forbes says:

So we have:

Forbes: Unusual to say the least
Hedge fund manager: Top three finance executives leaving in 18 months a "highly suspicious pattern"
Accountant in this thread: This isn't good
Spurious: Nothing to see here, move along, this doesn't mean anything.

Who to believe?
She spent 5 years at Tesla but spent two years and six months in her last role as VP of finance. Tesla give out a lot of stock compensation since they're cash poor and she would have left a lot of her money on the table. But I agree, this one isn't is as egregious. It's the three of the highest level departures in 18 months together that's really unusual and >90% a very bad sign if you run the priors. The bolded is also pure fantasy and false. She left a high end job at a high profile company with very good pay for a tiny one, and most definitely lower pay. Topia did a $48 million series C 9 months ago...she's getting paid far less than Tesla. In fact, she would have better return staying at Tesla, letting her options vest and using that money to buy into Topia. Nothing about this makes sense except her wanting to get to **** out of Tesla and willing to take far lower pay and lots of risk in a dubious startup.

Also note that Tesla paid their former CEO Deepak Ahuja $15 million in stock to come back, so they weren't shy about paying money to keep top talent.

Your assessment of the situation on every level is wrong.

It basically comes down to this: accountants know the business often better than anyone, and they certainly understand the bottom line and future projections best of all. They're a bit like the canary in the coal mine. When they're jumping ship (sorry to mix phyla), it's a good sign of impending trouble.

Now, let's look at the facts. Wheeler was paid $0.5M and received a total of 200'178 options with a strike price of 218.58 and an expiration date of December 14th 2025.

Given his vesting schedule, he received 62'555.625 options before departing. So, 137'622.375 options were unvested at this point in time.
The stock price on February 21, 2017 was $277.39.

Given a fictional payoff of $58.81. Leaving $8'093'571.87 on the table with the caveat that he would have needed to stay on for another 2.5 years. And then, of course, he would have had to wait another 6 years before he could have actually realized that value.

Given his profile and what I've read here (source is not ideal, I know), he would have made roughly the same amount somewhere else and potentially took a pay cut by joining Tesla.

No one leaves Tesla if they think the company will skyrocket, I get that. It's never a good sign when key people leave the company but the above is blown so far out of proportion, it's ridiculous. Wheeler didn't leave billions on the table. He also could have earned the same or more in a shorter time frame somewhere else. Studies have shown that people discount bonuses in the far out future substantially - I assume this was the case here as well.

So you're saying he couldn't cash in his options until the expiry date of the option 6 years later, even though they had already vested?

Also, the market would value those somewhere around $160, not $60. It's pretty ridiculous to think that these executives can't value their options beyond their intrinsic value. Particularly if they expect good results over the next few years their expected payout should be even higher.

I honestly thought that this was illegal (which seems to be wrong after googling).

If this isn't illegal then they could but I thought the entire purpose of restricting sale & execution of those options was to tie it to the actual goal.

You've done a far better job humiliating yourself than TS ever has.

I'd suggest learning the basics of a subject before spouting off on it. You don't really understand much about finance/business/etc.

Herbalife: Make **** for next to nothing and sell it for a fortune to suckers in an unregulated market and quasi pyramid scheme. Multi-level marketing that turns a fat profit and has no real capital outlay (basically printing cash as long as dopey latino* suckers keep buying in).

Tesla: Competing in the most capital intensive, low margin big business in the world with a hubristic manager who thinks he can do better than the world's best engineers, but is really just a disorganized cuck whose daddy didn't love him. Needs to generate $50 billion in net profit just to get capital levels high enough to reach a level playing field with the majors.

They're like polar opposites. Survival for one is betting that suckers will keep being suckers, and the other is betting that Musk is some kind of earth shattering genius who can revolutionize high end mass manufacturing.

The first is like 80+% and the second is like 2%.

*they rather horribly target poor latinos because of their extended families and get rich quick desires.

Not to mention it would cost a lot more for a rival to buy 25% of TSLA & pump the stock than HLF.

"but is really just a disorganized cuck whose daddy didn't love him."

hahaha I love how tooth sayer always makes this weirdly personal.

What would you say has a bigger impact on Tesla's operations, that Musk is a cuck or that his father didn't love him? Why is Muck being a cuck not particularly important in the rocket business?

It is personal for Musk. The entire reason Musk is doing what he's doing, trying to take on everything and save the world (in a hilariously misguided way that's actually net harmful) is because his father was an abusive psychopath. Tesla would not exist without that. It's a kind of triumph and credit to him that's he succeeded despite that - most people who start out like that don't do too well - but it's the driving force. And it's painful to watch.
I think there are plenty of bureaucratic cucks, and that's all that's needed to run a car company competently. The mess at Tesla is definitely because his father didn't love him, it's driving an endless need for speed and shortcuts and "coolness" to get that love he so craves, when they're the opposite of what you need in a car company.
Well I explained above several times. Rocket science is a tiny fledgling pork-barreled industry with a handful of players, ripe for disruption by a crazy energy willing to give scientists jobs and money and free reign and take safety shortcuts and throw his crazy energy into problem solving.

The car industry and mass manufacturing is in many ways the opposite - all the processes have been optimized away, margins are razor thin, errors are incredibly costly, and process wins over genius. It requires large amounts of deployed capital for economies of scale and tight supply chains. It's not a thing amenable to genius. It's a bureaucratic exercise of bringing together vast numbers of suppliers and processes into something that works with the lowest failure rate possible and razor thin margins are scraped out by flawless execution. Car making is death by 1000 cuts if you don't do that properly. Musk is totally unsuited for that, he's incompetent at it. Musk is a damaged grand-narrative guy who can't reliably and consistently do details.

so being a cuck is actually beneficial in the auto industry, but that's overwhelmed by Musk's father not loving him. Interesting.

It's never beneficial, just not a fatal impediment like the grandiose and chaotic management that Musk has brought to everything, that comes from being unloved. His psychological flaws are great for startups making prototypes and trying to push the bounds and trying to get investors and true believers on board. They're awful for scale and mass manufacturing. If Musk could delegate that might be ok, but he's a deluded micromanager who's so hyper-focused on his grand narratives that he'll push them at the expense of sanity. That only ends one way in mass manufaturing.

You're welcome.

are there any other prominent cuck ceos in American business? How did their fathers feel about them?