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‘I don’t want to hold an investment in a firm run by someone like Elon Musk. The next 10 years are not going to be about Unicorn Hype — it will be back to fundamentals.’
That’s the bearish view on the future of Tesla TSLA, +0.96% held by Bill Blain, strategist at London-based Shard Capital.
“Musk is a product of our age. Entitled, arrogant, unbelievably rich and powerful, he reckons normal rules don’t apply to him,” he wrote of the car maker’s chief executive in a note on Monday.
Blain’s take stems from Musk’s recent courtroom drama in which he was found not to have defamed Vernon Unsworth, a British cave explorer, by calling him “pedo guy” in an angry tweet. Unsworth drew the ire of Musk when he dismissed Tesla’s efforts to help the soccer team trapped in the Thailand cave last year as a PR stunt.
Musk said he only meant the term as an insult for “creepy old man” and wasn’t literally calling Unsworth a pedophile. Attorney Lin Wood suggested Unsworth be award $190 million in damages.
“What in the world would it take to discourage Elon Musk from ever planting a nuclear bomb in the life of another person?” Wood said, calling Musk a “billionaire bully” in his closing argument, which ultimately wasn’t enough to sway jurors.
Shard Capital’s Blain was “shocked” by the ruling.
“Don’t tell me he was found innocent in court last week and therefore has no case to answer,” he wrote. “I don’t give a toss if he is a visionary, a great engineer, or whatever baloney he claims. In my opinion, such a man is not fit to run a major firm and is not deserving of our respect.”
Blain compared Musk to WeWork’s Adam Neumann — whom Democratic presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren recently slammed as part of a “rigged and corrupt system” — and said that these kinds of episodes and leaders should change the way we look and value these companies.
“Musk is a product of our age. Entitled, arrogant, unbelievably rich and powerful, he reckons normal rules don’t apply to him,” Blain wrote in his note. “He sends a clear message it’s fine for marginally socialised billionaires to act above the law. That is not a man you want to invest your pension in.”
At last check, Tesla shares were up 1.3% to $340.40 in Monday’s trading session. The stock is in the black for the year, recovering from a nosedive that bottomed out below $180 back in June.
Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
