① Former Tesla executive Baglino exercised options and sold his shares worth US$180 million; ② Earlier this month, on the same day Tesla announced global layoffs, Baglino also announced his departure from Tesla; ③ Tesla is in a critical transformation period, and Baglino's departure and sale of shares is certainly intriguing.
AFP, April 27 (Editor Malan) Tesla's future is bright in the eyes of some, but in the eyes of others, it's not worth betting on. Drew Baglino, a former Tesla executive who announced his departure this month, is probably the group of people who are not optimistic about Tesla's prospects.
According to Tesla's filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission this week, Baglino has exercised most of its vested stock options, converted to 1.14 million shares and sold them all, worth approximately $181.5 million.
On April 15, Tesla announced that it would lay off more than 10% of its global workforce due to falling deliveries in the first quarter. On the same day, Baglino, who was Tesla's senior vice president of powertrain and energy engineering at the time, also said he would leave the company.
Prior to this week's latest stock sell-off, Baglino had already sold about $4 million worth of Tesla shares in two deals this year, one at the end of February and the other at the beginning of April. The number of shares sold in both transactions was 10,500 shares, and stock options were exercised in both cases.
Baglino's clearance of all Tesla holdings at this point is certainly a pretty clear sign of bearishness. However, at Tesla's earnings conference this week, CEO Musk promised to launch more new technologies and upgrade the existing product system, triggering a frenzy in the market. This is the complete opposite of Baglino's idea.
skeptics
Musk said on this week's earnings call that Tesla still plans to produce new affordable electric vehicles in 2025, and investors should pay more attention to Tesla's autonomous roadmap. The company plans to launch the robot taxi design on August 8 and invest more in artificial intelligence.
Within three trading days after the earnings conference, Tesla's stock price has risen 16.25%, but up to this year, the stock price has dropped by 32.26%.
Seeing the recent bullish sentiment in the market, some skeptics couldn't help but express their concerns. Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi questioned whether the low-cost electric car promised by Musk is a real new model or an improvement on the existing model?
Furthermore, he also pointed out that Tesla's competitor Waymo is already providing robot taxi services on the road, and Tesla is still working to develop autonomous vehicles. This gap makes Musk's “Heartfelt Blueprint” seem less appealing than the market thought.
Tesla's longtime bully Ron Baron also showed some disappointment. He pointed out that Tesla's stock price has only risen 1% in the past year. With the general market being so strong, a 1% increase in 12 months is really not something that makes investors happy.
However, he also believes that Tesla's stock price is close to the bottom and will begin to rise sharply. He believes Tesla's new low-cost car plan will fill the delivery gap, and that the new plan will not require additional capital expenses.