Einhorn: Elon Musk is a promotional CEO who’s blinding his own investors
Closely followed hedge fund manager David Einhorn, the founder of Greenlight Capital, just made another swipe an Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk.
“Last quarter we ended our letter with a quote about Tesla. This quarter we begin with one from Dave Pell, editor of NextDraft: ‘It’s pretty amazing that we live in an age when a CEO of two public companies can give a talk about colonizing Mars and shareholders don’t see that as a warning signal,'” Einhorn wrote in a letter dated October 28.
He continued: “It’s not so amazing when one considers that those same complacent shareholders have been willing to look past years of over-promising and under-delivering from a promotional CEO. Elon Musk’s ability to spin a yarn and keep a story going seems to mesmerize his investors, blinding them to the challenges the company is facing.”
Einhorn has not publicly stated a position on Tesla.
However, he closed his second quarter letter in late July with the following quote: “’We believe Tesla’s most valuable asset may be the trust it has built with its providers of capital.’ — Adam Jonas (not one of the Jonas Brothers)”
Jonas is an auto analyst for Morgan Stanley.
Greenlight’s funds returned 3.4%, 1 net of fees, in the third quarter, bringing the year-to-date net return to 3.8%, the letter said. During the quarter, the S&P 500 index returned 3.9%, bringing its year-to-date return to 7.8%.
Tesla didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
ValueWalk first reported the contents of the letter.
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Julia La Roche is a finance reporter at Yahoo Finance.
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