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Elon Musk's $1 Trillion Payday: Are Tesla Shareholders Drinking the Kool-Aid?
Alright, let's get this straight. Another day, another chance for Elon Musk to ask for, like, a trillion dollars. And this time, it's tied to Tesla hitting some seriously pie-in-the-sky targets. Market cap of $8.5 trillion? Ebitda exploding 30x in a decade? Give me a break.
The Cult of Personality...and Profit?
So, the whole thing hinges on whether shareholders think Musk is worth that kind of scratch. Tesla chair Robyn Denholm is out there practically begging investors, warning that Musk might just up and leave if he doesn't get his way. "Tesla would lose ‘significant value without Musk,'" she bleats. Oh, boo-hoo.
It's the same old song and dance. "We need Elon! He's the only one who can lead us to the promised land of robotaxis and a million humanoid robots!" Yeah, and I'm waiting for my flying car.
Counterpoint Global at Morgan Stanley is on board too, naturally. They're gushing about Tesla's "incredible fundamental success and shareholder returns" under Musk. But let's be real: how much of that is actual innovation versus hype and meme stock mania? Are they really analyzing the financials or just worshipping at the altar of Elon?
And then you've got Ron Baron, tweeting about how there'd be no Tesla without Musk's "relentless drive and uncompromising standards." Uncompromising standards? The guy's tweeting memes while supposedly running multiple companies! I mean, come on!
The Skeptics Have a Point (For Once)
Now, not everyone's buying the hype. Norges Bank Investment Management, the folks who manage Norway's sovereign wealth fund, are voting "no." They're worried about "award, dilution and lack of mitigation of key person risk.” Which is fancy finance-speak for "this is insane."
CalPERS, California's public employee retirement system, is also voting against it. Their guy, Drew Hambly, called the deal "larger than payment plans for executives of other firms ‘by many orders of magnitude’ and would ‘further concentrate power in a single shareholder.'" Ya think?
And then there's Musk himself, whining about Glass Lewis and ISS being "corporate terrorists" for daring to question his trillion-dollar grab. The fragile ego on this guy...it's astounding. He even "raised the possibility" of bailing on Tesla if he doesn't get more voting power. Threatening the shareholders? Real classy.
Look, I get it. Musk is a visionary. Or at least, he's good at convincing people he is. But is he really worth a trillion dollars? Is any single person? This feels more like a cult of personality than sound business practice. It's like watching a bunch of lemmings lining up to jump off a cliff, hoping Elon will build them a parachute on the way down.
And what about those milestones? 10 million Full Self Driving subscriptions? A million robotaxis? A million robots sold? Tesla has a few hundred robotaxis on the road right now. A few hundred! They need to scale that up by, oh, about a thousand-fold. The cars should be easy, offcourse, but the other goals? I ain't holding my breath.
The Punchline
According to Polymarket, there is a 96% chance that Tesla will approve Musk's pay deal. It's like they are all drinking the kool-aid. What's next? Are we going to let him build a solid gold statue of himself on Mars with shareholder money? Tesla Stock Down Ahead of Today's Shareholder Meeting; Elon Musk's $1T Pay Package Gets a Vote; Watch the Livestream Here