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(Elbil24 🙂 Trevor Milton is in many ways the same for the American company Nikola, as Elon Musk is for Tesla. Until now.
On Monday morning, Trevor Milton announced his resignation as top manager and chairman of the board of Nikola, after the company in a report has been sabotaged as the greatest bluff of all time.
Nikola has primarily suited the time to develop hydrogen-powered trailers, but has recently also focused on smaller battery-electric commercial vehicles.
The common denominator is that none of the products have materialized so far.
Nikola takes a Tesla
Lies and deception?
Nikola has recently entered into a number of agreements with other companies. Most recently, there was an agreement with General Motors that GM would be responsible for the development and production of Nikola Badger, a battery-electric pick-up that is planned for the market during the next year. This was very well received by the market, and gave the Nikola share a sharp boost of over 40 percent.
Just days after this promise, The research agency Hindenburg Research published a report where they accused Nikola of lying and deliberately misleading investors.
One of the main points should be that Nikola in 2017 showed a hydrogen-powered trailer in motion, and through well-chosen words left the audience with the impression that it went for its own machine.
This was not the case, as it was on a road with enough slope for the car to roll by itself.
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Motargumentene
In retrospect, Nikola has dismissed all criticism, with excuses that they then said that the car was “in motion” – in motion – but never that it drove for its own machine. Nikola has hereby admitted that the hydrogen car did not run on its own power.
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This was just one of several points in the Hindenburg report, and they had, among other things, statements from employees, e-mail correspondence, and several other points they thought provided a basis for saying that Trevor Milton and Nikola exaggerated the accumulation of their own situation and product.
Several of the points can be considered from the sidelines as rubbish, but which nevertheless creates uncertainty about the company’s credibility.
Nikola responded by putting a law firm on the case, formulated an official response, in addition to asking the US Financial Supervisory Authority to review the allegations. The SEC – Security and Exchange Commission – has announced that it will look into the matter, but has not yet made any statements.
That’s why VW is dropping hydrogen
In good and bad days
The agreement with GM raised the Nikola share from $ 35, to just over $ 50 at most. Hindenburg Research acknowledges that prior to the publication, they had taken a short position on Nikola – that they had put money on the Nikola share going down, not up. The increase thus caused Hindenburg Research a decent loss.
Thus, Hindenburg Research also had a motive that helps to cast doubt on their methods. They have also previously been in the spotlight for influencing share prices for their own gain.
Nikola has not only made big deals with GM. They also entered into a major agreement with the Norwegian hydrogen company NEL, in connection with the roll-out of a planned filling network for hydrogen – in the same way as Tesla has its charging network. Through this agreement, NEL has become a shareholder in Nikola, and in the last quarterly report from NEL, the paper gain from the price increase in Nikola formed a significant part of the result.
As a result of the noise around Nikola, the NEL share has now also felt the force of gravity over the past week, and today’s news did not improve on this.
The fact that Trevor Milton is now resigning from his position as top manager and chairman of the board of Nikola is helping to strengthen the doubts created by the Hindenburg report.
In the negotiations on Wall Street, Nikola is down 25 percent for the day, while NEL at the time of writing has fallen 16.76 percent – only today.
Hoarded hydrogen cars – focuses on “homemade” fuel
What now?
Like Elon Musk, Trevor Milton has been a ring fox on Twitter, which has created noise for both of them. The difference is that Milton does not currently have a ready-to-sell product to refer to, and it is currently difficult to measure whether the big mouth is able to deliver as promised.
After the Hindenburg report was published, Milton went out and tried to put out all small and large fires via his Twitter account, without much success. Finally, he was internally asked not to comment other than through the law firm. Pipa was then also quiet, until this morning when he announced his departure.
Again, an entire market sits and wonders whether the departure is actually due to a lack of a real foundation in Nikola, or whether it may be due to his special leadership style and form of communication.
Ahead of the dismissal, most major investors, such as GM, Iveco and NEL, have stated that they still supported Nikola, with Trevor Milton at the helm. The question then becomes, what now?
Nikola tells in a press release that Stephen Girsky takes over from Trevor Milton. Girsky is an experienced man from the car industry, and has sailing time from General Motors, and already sat on the board of Nikola.
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