The gross excesses of the Western financial system are rapidly approaching their mathematical limits.
Or at least, that's what the numbers say.
The stock price of Tesla, a key factor in the markets continuing "strength", is getting out of touch with reality as it increasingly appears the shareholders of the company are clueless.
Nevertheless, that hasn't stopped said shareholders from giving Musk a pay package that could be worth as much as $50 Billion (!!), plus stock upside to his already existent options, assuming he hits some arbitrary milestones for market cap.
"...plan sets cash compensation at zero but would grant Musk up to 20.3 million shares if Tesla meets a series of financial hurdles and increases its market cap to at least $650 billion, from roughly $50 billion today."
Conspicuously absent was any need for Tesla to actually be a profitable company at any point, rendering the performance targets Musk must hit fucking asinine.
Tesla is priced at twice as much as Ford. Yet, Tesla sold 100,000 cars last year at a 2 BILLION LOSS while Ford sold 6 MILLION cars at a $7.6 BILLION PROFIT. Tesla is broke and needs new funding while Ford has a war-chest of $12 billion in cash.
When your market leading companies are enormous, objective failures that burn money and survive on subsidy...well, this is the stuff market tops are made of.
At those numbers, Tesla's value is negative in my book. It's an actual worthless company. It's proficient at only two things - making promises it can't keep and losing money. That makes it useless as a corporation. Worse than nothing.
However, that's not even the worst of it - that's just what you'll see if you look at even the most basic, public financial metrics. Tesla has also been secretly under investigation by the SEC, and rather thoroughly it would appear: "there have been 85 SEC requests for additional information and disclosures in the last 5 years. This compares to Ford Motor Company’s total of zero over the same time frame."
In other words, not only are they nearly broke and burning money faster than a cash bonfire, they are unlikely to get much confidence from the public borrowing markets.
I searched long and hard for a narrative other than shareholder idiocy to describe their continuing faith in Musk, but I just can't come up with one. Musk's pay package essentially pays nothing if he fails to meet the market cap milestones laid out in the contract. I tried to come up with a way this was actually shrewd - perhaps the shareholders expected Musk to fail and wanted to avoid paying him. However, the destruction of shareholder equity that would come from knowingly appointing incompetent leadership would far outweigh any savings on executive compensation. "Penny-wise and pound-foolish," as they say across the pond.
All I can say is, if you own Tesla stock, be ready to get the heck out of Dodge. Because, ironically, you'd probably be better off investing in Dodge than Tesla at this point. Just ask Al Bundy.
Plus, you won't have to charge it.
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Sources: Google, CNN, Wall Street Journal, Motley Fool, ZH, Sovereign Man
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