Elon Musk has been accused of acting like “a little baby” and being “almost in tears” during an earnings call in which the billionaire struck a pessimistic tone about the economy.
The Tesla CEO’s behaviour on the third-quarter earnings call was slammed as “terrible” by financial analyst Kevin Paffrath and the electric automaker’s stock price dropped 15 per cent in the two days following it.
“For a leader to cry about the economy rather than funnelling that and coming up with a plan is pathetic,” Mr Paffrath, who owns Tesla stock, told Yahoo Finance.
And he added: “We need to know the light is at the end of the tunnel rather than hearing a complaining CEO who’s not actually providing that path.”
Tesla reported weaker-than-expected third-quarter results, with both earnings per share and revenue of $23.35bn falling short of analysts’ estimates, according to Yahoo Finance.
But despite the issues as of Friday, the company’s share price was up 96 per cent year-to-date.
Mr Paffrath, a YouTuber with 1.9 million followers, was not the only analyst to criticise Mr Musk’s performance.
Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives described the call as a “mini disaster” during which a “cautious” Mr Musk downplayed expectations for the Cybertruck and focused on high interest rates.
“We dug our own grave with Cybertruck” Mr Musk said on the call, calling it a “great product” but also said he wanted to “temper expectations” for the long-awaited pickup truck.
“Demand is off the charts. We have over 1 million people who have reserved the car, so it’s not a demand issue,” he said.
“But we have to make it, and we need to make it a price that people can afford, insanely difficult things.”
The Independent has reached out to Tesla for comment.
