Forget Twitter: Elon Musk has his hands full keeping Tesla on the road

theguardian.com:

Spare a brief thought for Elon Musk’s bankers and lawyers. One week he is posting earnest polls about freedom of speech on Twitter, and the next he is spending billions of dollars on a major stake in the social media site, before attempting an all-cash take-private deal complete with by-now-compulsory stoner meme. (And possibly – no, let’s be honest, probably – sticking two fingers up to US regulators at the same time.) Just another fortnight in the life of the world’s richest man.

Musk’s all-or-nothing ultimatum has made for box-office corporate drama, and nervous times in Twitter’s boardroom. But social media executives may not be the only ones feeling queasy: Tesla shareholders are also watching closely. Shares in Musk’s electric car company dropped by 3% on Thursday.

The whole rigmarole is a “soap opera”, according to Daniel Ives, analyst at US investment bank Wedbush Securities. He highlighted a “host of questions around financing, regulatory and balancing Musk’s time”.

The last of these is perhaps the most pressing for Tesla’s investors. For Musk, Tesla is only one part of the world’s ultimate portfolio career. He also runs companies exploring brain-controlled computing, the colonisation of Mars, and car tunnels that will try to simultaneously defy Los Angeles congestion and the principle of induced demand – that building more roads causes more traffic.

When it comes to creating shareholder value, Musk is right up there (although Apple’s Tim Cook and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos are still ahead). He stewarded Tesla through “manufacturing hell” and near-bankruptcy to reach a $1 trillion market value.

Analysts expect the numbers to keep moving in the right direction on Wednesday when Tesla announces results for the first quarter