Elon Musk tells Tesla employees to not be ‘bothered by stock market craziness’

Elon Musk told Tesla employees in a new email that they should “not be too bothered by stock market craziness” even though the price has been in free fall for the last year.

After a whole year of almost straight nonstop decline, now down 69% year-to-date, Tesla’s stock has been a prominent subject of discussions amongst EV investors.

But there’s another group of people that is being significantly negatively affected by the drop in price and hasn’t been talked about much: Tesla employees.

A part of their compensation is made up of stock options, and when the price drops 69% in a single year, that is going to have an impact – both financial and on morale.

Today, Electrek obtained an email Elon Musk sent to all Tesla employees to thank them for their hard work. In it he also told workers to “not be too bothered by stock market craziness”:

Btw, don’t be too bothered by stock market craziness. As we demonstrate continued excellent performance, the market will recognize that.

He also again reiterated that he believes Tesla will be the most valuable company on earth longterm.

The CEO also again asked employees to go “all out” for the end of the quarter:

Please go all out for the next few days and volunteer to help deliver if at all possible. It will make a real difference!

The email comes as Tesla is trying to empty out its inventory before the end of the year. As we reported last week, it is working, but the automaker had to offer deep discounts to make it happen.

Electrek’s Take

Obviously, this is easy to say for a billionaire who has sold billions of dollars worth of the company’s stock over the last year – significantly contributing to the decline.

Also, I’d note that Elon has often used the fact that Tesla offers stock options to all workers to claim that Tesla’s compensation is better than anyone in the auto industry. If you are going to claim that, you can’t really tell employees to “not be bothered” by the stock price when it’s falling like a rock.

Tesla’s focus should undoubtedly be on execution and not the stock price, but there’s something that feels wrong about a billionaire who is partly responsible for the stock price falling telling non-rich people working for him who are affected by price declines to just ignore it.

But that’s par for the course lately as Elon seems not to be very self-aware nowadays.

Also, the entire reason that Elon is asking employees to go “all out” at the end of the quarter is due to “stock market craziness.” He himself admitted that these end-of-quarter pushes are inefficient, but it does look better on the balance sheet at the end of the quarter when there are no cars on inventory.