Tesla’s push to prove the haters wrong proves them right

Wall Street naysayers: Musk asked his staff to ‘throw a pie in the face of all the naysayers on Wall Street’. — AFP

THERE’S a touch of deja vu about my colleague Dana Hull’s scoop on Thursday that Tesla’s vice president of production urged a blitz of Model 3 vehicle production to “prove a bunch of haters wrong.”

You, too, may recall CEO Elon Musk’s call in the summer of 2016 for Tesla Inc’s staff to “throw a pie in the face of all the naysayers on Wall Street.” Back then, it was all about pushing sales and cutting costs to help Tesla report a rare set of positive earnings. It worked, although only by pulling a couple of levers marked “zero-emission vehicle credits” and “working capital overdrive.” Within a year, Tesla capitalised on investors’ confidence with an equity issue and its first-ever bond sale.