While it may be true that earnings calls can be rather dull with investors asking questions about the company’s business and performance, it appears that Elon Musk wanted to talk about anything but his company’s business on Wednesday.
According to CNN Money, Tesla executives were taking calls from Wall Street investors: when part way through a Q&A session, an analyst from Bernstein was in a back-and-forth with Deepak Ahuja, Tesla’s chief financial officer, about capital expenditures. Musk interrupted the conversation, saying, “Excuse me. Next. Boring, bonehead questions are not cool. Next?”
As the questions went on, it finally got to the point that Musk interrupted again, saying, “We’re gonna go to YouTube. Sorry. These questions are so dry. They’re killing me.”
Reuters reports that over the next 20 minutes or so, Musk took questions from Galileo Russell, host of the “HyperChange TV” YouTube channel, which has more than 9,000 subscribers. Oh, Russell is also a Tesla investor.
“Thanks for the great questions,” Musk said after fielding questions on issues including Model Y production and plans for a self-driving car network. However, investors were not impressed.
Tesla stocks take a dip
As Reuters points out, “Ducking analysts’ questions has a price: $2 billion.” Tesla shares fell more than 5.0 percent in after-hours trading, and the company posted it’s biggest ever quarterly loss on Wednesday, despite Musk’s continuing to paint glowing pictures of how well Model 3 production is going.
Tesla continues to spend huge amounts of money on its Model 3 assembly line, further exacerbating the company’s cash burn. Tesla said it ended the quarter with $3.2 billion in cash after spending $655.7 million in quarterly capital expenses. However, Tesla says that while gross margins on Model 3’s are slightly negative right now, they are expected to grow to “highly positive” in the second half of the year.
