Elon Musk can’t stop tweeting – and gets himself into trouble again. His recent statements caused Tesla’s stock to crash. That could call SEC on the plan.
Tesla boss Elon Musk has lowered the market value of the electric car manufacturer by billions with a series of strange tweets. Musk wrote on Friday that he believes the Tesla share price is too high. In addition, the billionaire tweeted: “I sell almost all physical property” – and that he will no longer own a house. The Tesla share then ended the trading day with a minus of a good ten percent. When asked by the Wall Street Journal whether the tweets were a joke and whether the company approved them before publication, Musk replied by email with a “no,” the newspaper reported.
That could put the Tesla boss in the focus of the US Securities and Exchange Commission again. An agreement with the authorities stipulates that Musk must have the company approve his tweets. This was triggered by Musk’s announcement on Twitter in the summer of 2018 that he was considering taking Tesla off the stock exchange and that the funding was secured. The SEC, after an investigation, concluded that Musk had no firm funding commitments and enforced the Twitter restrictions.
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Musk is also known to cause a stir and confusion with bizarre Twitter appearances. After the SEC agreement, he wrote that he was “the new nothing” from Tesla and thus sparked speculation that he had given up the executive position. On April 1 last year, he tweeted a photo jokingly about a Tesla bankruptcy. An important question now could be whether the indication that it was Musk’s opinion freed him from the release obligation.
The action comes of all times while Tesla came into calm waters economically after high losses. It was only on Wednesday that the company celebrated its longest stretch of profitability since its foundation in 2003 with the third consecutive quarterly profit. Despite the sharp losses on Friday, the share price has risen by over 80 percent since the beginning of the year – despite the corona pandemic affecting the automotive industry charged.
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