Things are getting complicated for Elon Musk
A year ago, at the same time, the boss of Space X and Tesla was named “personality of the year” by the American magazine Time. Musk had entered Olympus. Except that his first steps as head of Twitter proved catastrophic: his violent management, his back-and-forth on content moderation, the deletion and then restoration of the accounts of American journalists… The result is the escape of a number of the big advertisers and losses for Twitter that could reach 4 billion dollars in 2022: 18 times more than in 2021!
This debacle also affects Tesla
For two reasons.
First, Tesla’s image is that of Musk and the billionaire’s escapades could well be reflected on the brand. Hence why Musk went into a lot of debt to buy – very expensively – Twitter and was forced to sell a lot of Tesla shares for it. He now he owns only 13% stake in the company. And the stock market literally crashed.
All of this is going very badly because the American manufacturer’s hegemony over the electric vehicle is about to crack. Every car brand on the planet is making an extremely rapid transition to electric with a much wider choice of cars than Tesla. Competition is fierce, both on the top of the range with Volvo for example, but also on much cheaper cars. Especially since Chinese manufacturers, (such as BYD or Wuling) which are the largest electric car manufacturers in the world, are lurking.
Are Musk and Tesla threatened with bankruptcy?
No, we’re not there at all. Tesla’s profitability today is the highest in the entire global automotive industry. The problem is elsewhere: Tesla shareholders are starting to seriously worry and complain about their CEO’s time spent on Twitter. They gave him everything when everything was going well, but they weren’t sure it would last long. Recently, it was one of the company’s largest individual shareholders, a billionaire of Indonesian origin, who said that today Tesla no longer has a boss. And all these financiers could try to find him a successor in 2023 to save the company.
He forgot but twice in the past Musk has been fired by shareholders and the board of directors from the position of CEO he held, in companies he created himself. True, that was a long time ago. And Musk didn’t have the aura he has today. But sometimes the story falters.
