Elon Musk is under siege.
The billionaire entrepreneur has been under public attack for several weeks by some of Tesla’s largest and most vocal retail shareholders.
The more the stock of the manufacturer of electric vehicles plummets, the more the attacks of these individual shareholders redouble and become violent.
One that stands out is Leo KoGuan, a Chinese investor. KoGuan claims to be Tesla’s third-largest retail shareholder after Musk himself and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison (ORCL) – Get a free report.
For the past few days, KoGuan has been going after Musk on a daily basis. He went, as he says himself, from a fan boy of King Techno, the title of Musk to Tesla (TSLA) – Get a free report, to the number 1 adversary of the PDG. He no longer hesitates to accuse Musk of wanting to destroy the value created at Tesla.
“If I knew I wouldn’t invest in Tesla”
Note that the serial entrepreneur has not yet responded to any attack from KoGuan. Tesla releases its fourth quarter 2022 results on January 25. Until then, the directors of the company are required to observe a period of silence, as required by stock market legislation. They cannot discuss elements likely to influence the share price.
“I’m 100% into Tesla because I believe in Elon Musk and Tesla,” KoGuan wrote on Twitter on January 7. “But he kills SH and Tesla. If I knew I wouldn’t invest in Tesla.”
“Elon invested ≈ $200 million but withdrew $40 billion, Larry invested $1 billion, I invested over $3 billion, I have no choice but to act and express myself. I’m crying out for help!”
KoGuan’s anger and revolt is due to Tesla’s stock market route. In 2022, Tesla stock lost 65% of its value, translating to over $600 billion in market capitalization evaporated in a year. Tesla’s market value is currently $357 billion, up from over $1 trillion at the start of 2022.
While Musk attributes this stock market disaster to macroeconomic factors like the Federal Reserveaggressively raising interest rates to fight the inflation and the energy crisis in Europe, many Tesla shareholders, including KoGuan, believe its $44 billion acquisition of Twitter is the big deal.
They claim that when Musk set his sights on social media, he completely left Tesla behind. Worse still, he has alienated many Tesla buyers by regularly attacking progressives and democrats on Twitter.
“We want Elon back at Tesla, but has a hot new beauty named Twitter. Twitter gives him the ‘dear leader’ power he craves to decide who wins, loses and dies,” blasted Jan. 8. KoGuan, who invested about $3. billion Tesla shares.
“Blind Cult Fanboys”
To a Twitter user pointing out that Musk had lost $200 billion in personal paper wealth due to the Tesla stock market crash, KoGuan said that was not the case.
“No no no!” replied the investor. “Not only did he abandon Tesla, but his capital is also gone! He’s the greatest financial genius of our time. He’s banked 40 billion dollars, his investment in Tesla is not nil, nil, but negative – $39 billion, but he owns 13.4%+ bought 304 million shares. Paper lost $200 billion, he’s a ghost.”
“Correct,” agreed Ross Gerber, another major Tesla shareholder who has criticized Musk in recent weeks. “Elon, didn’t lose anything. He took over $40…”
KoGuan’s revolt and his call for rebellion are however very badly taken by some Musk fans and members of the Tesla community. The latter defend the tech mogul and accuse the investor of hypocrisy. To which KoGuan responds by denouncing what he calls the cult of Musk.
“Every day you tweet about love and how you respect it,” one Twitter user tweeted to KoGuan. “As soon as stocks plunged, you reversed your face. Hopefully stocks go down so we can screen out people like you.”
“Man, I’m protecting blind cult fanboys from themselves,” the investor replied. “I was his blind fanboy, but no more. I can’t save Tesla alone. We need all SH and institutional fund managers to fix Tesla’s governance anomaly because we love Tesla. “
He thinks the time has come to limit Musk’s powers at Tesla. For him, the board of directors must play its role.
“Leo, with all due respect, rather than stoking a rebellion (which will fail), how about working on solutions? Given your number of actions, @MartinViecha can be contacted and can convey your concerns to the CEO and Board? ‘battle’ seems inappropriate,” tweeted a self-described Musk fan on Twitter.
“I reached out to both the board and last year’s board. We have broken promises. You, the Elon fangirl, and Gary [Black, another Tesla shareholder] made a buyout request but got the board and silent treatment of it,” KoGuan replied.
“A desperate situation requires a desperate move,” he added. “We are hopeless. Doing nothing is not an option!
BOD stands for board of directors. “The One” refers to Musk.
He repeated the same call to action on January 8.
“I contacted the board and this for about 1 year, what I got was nothing or empty promises at best. In fact, from these interactions I discovered that Tesla is a show business but it’s no longer a family business, it’s a public company with over 100,000 employees.
KoGuan, however, plans to remain a large shareholder of Tesla.
“Here’s my promise unless Great Captain Larry Ellison buys more Tesla stock, I plan to have about 50 million shares to become Tesla’s 2nd largest individual shareholder by 2026,” said the investor. “I welcome blind cult followers competing with me who will hold the most shares by 2030?”
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