[AtlasBarfed]

I smell margin call desperation. Musk got visibly worried with tanking Tesla stock and pulled out some crazy stops to keep Tesla afloat.

Remember, these megabillionaires are due to stock valuations, and live rich lifestyles on the basis of lending against the value of stock. If that value drops and a margin call forces actual selling, then Musk loses shares in Tesla.

I have to think this stunt is related to Musk needing some liquidity somehow, or being unable to cover private liquidity crunch with public assets.

TSLA is ludicrously overvalued. P/E is 150, based on Q4 earnings which were 1/3 "real" revenue, 1/3 mark-to-market-BTC (aka one shot), 1/3 CAFE/subsidies which Trump will nuke in 6 months.

But the "real" earnings that were already flat in Q4 are seeing a huge drop in EU/CN and who knows in the US. If "real" revenue drops 20%, the "real" earnings might drop 70% or more.

Anyway, that 150 p/e is ACTUALLY 450 in my mind, but after Q1 reports it will ACTUALLY be almost 1000 or worse.

The only thing keeping the stock afloat is AI hype, but 1000 p/e ratios are for people with market dominance and fundamental leads on competitors. Tesla is arguably middle of the road in both self driving and robots.

[HWR_14]

Tesla is still worth more than it was 6 months ago. I don't think a margin call based on borrowing a few years ago is likely.

[mrweasel]

People tend to only look at the drop from January until now, but if you look back a little further it seems clear that the market was expecting some payout from Musks relationship to Trump. When that's didn't really amounted to anything, the stock price just dropped down to it's September 2024 level and continued from there, as if October - January didn't happen.

What surprises me is that the drop in sales numbers seems to have zero effect on the stock price, at least not yet.

[Zigurd]

The earnings call for Q1 2025 hasn't happened yet. Those usually happen at the end of the first month of the subsequent quarter.

[immibis]

When is the first earnings call after everyone realized Musk was a Nazi?

[AtlasBarfed]

Q1 sales call.

I was trying to stay apolitical but a CEO doing Nazi salute and not being fired is uncharted waters, at least in the last 80-85 years.

I keep going back to the horsemeat episodes on mad men, and the papa johns CEO getting booted. This is simply unprecedented in brand management. Brands take decades to build, and are especially important for car companies.

[wraaath]

I was thinking margin calls too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43423201#43425801

He had a sizable chunk of collateralized borrowings against his Tesla shares even before the Twitter acquisition. There was the risk of a margin call during year following the acquisition, but AI became the latest hotness so he was able to spin up a company to cook up some more market bubble.

[j4coh]

If it’s an all stock acquisition did it generate any liquidity?

[Zigurd]

Sort of: it put Twitter's LBO debt on X.ai's books. I strongly suspect Elon had been lending X money to cover interest payments. Both X.ai and X are privately held, so specifics will be hard to come by.