jeremyp
Philosopher
Agreed.I wonder- Teslas sales are cratering worldwide, with many countries having their sales drop by 50% or more, despite overall EV sales going up by 10-20%....
Less money coming in...
AND the Tesla board just approved his 'trillion dollar payrise'- which has to be making investors bloody uneasy indeed- just WHAT does he bring to the table that makes him worth that much??? its not his 'popularity' as thats been on the downwards slope for the last few years... even the fanniest of fanboi's are starting to say 'well that IS a lot of money......
Well no. The Tesla board recommended the package to the shareholders and they voted for it. That suggests that the thing they are uneasy about is Musk losing interest in running Tesla.
And they got to get it in somehow- or the investors dont get their money....
And that makes THEM unhappy....
And trump and him aren't bestest buds anymore- so all those government contracts have stopped or slowed as well....
The problem is that his wealth is not liquid. It mostly consists of shares in Tesla and SpaceX. If he tries to sell Tesla shares, the price gores down which reduces the value of the rest of his holding and that is important because he uses his stock as collateral for bank loans. If the price goes too low (about $100 according to some estimates) he will be subject to margin calls i.e. the banks will ask him to put up more collateral or pay down some of his debt. He can't sell his SpaceX shares, at least not on the open market because SpaceX is a private company. So he doesn't have as much money as it might seem looking at his headline valuation.I'm wondering if 'the richest man in the world' is (like trump) worth a lot less than he claims he is....
From Musk's point of view the IPO has a couple of downsides: it slightly dilutes his control (they are only selling 2%, so not much) and it makes SpaceX subject to the rules of a public company. They have to publish their accounts and obey tedious rules that Musk doesn't like. I don't think SpaceX would be doing this if they didn't need the money.
I think this is purely about developing Starship. They have a $3 billion contract with NASA to build the HLS and I think they have used all that money up. I don't think SpaceX's other projects (Falcon 9 and Starlink) produce nearly enough - if any - profit to cover the expenses incurred on Starship so far.













