According to foreign media reports, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has not had a good relationship with the media all the time, so that the automaker dissolved its public relations (PR) department two years ago, and musk and its twitter account have also become the company's public voice channel. However, some well-known Tesla supporters, including financial analysts, are calling on musk to re-establish the media relations team.
Original title: Tesla fans call on musk to re-establish PR team from: Gaishi automobile
Last week, Musk's layoffs were widely reported by the media, resulting in a sharp drop in the company's share price.
Since Tesla did not respond to media inquiries about layoffs and did not submit shareholder statements, people began to doubt whether the company could achieve its growth goals under the current economic environment. On June 5, Gary black, managing partner of the future fund, said on Twitter: "I have said many times about Tesla's refusal to make public relations investment. If you have never really participated in the game, you can't complain about your failure."
Musk himself clarified Tesla's position last weekend, saying that the number of employees worldwide would not decrease significantly. However, it is difficult to recover the decline of share price and the damage to the credibility of communication between the company and shareholders.
Before the media exposed that musk ordered employees to return to the office, the market had already felt uneasy. After this report, some fans asked musk what he thought of those employees who thought the work in the office was outdated. Then musk responded: "if they want to pretend to work, they should go to other companies."
This has led people to speculate that musk plans to lay off employees by encouraging some salaried employees (excluding those who are paid by working hours on the production line) to leave.
On June 3, it was reported that musk sent an email to Tesla executives, saying that he had a "super bad feeling" about the economy, and suggested reducing the number of employees worldwide by 10%. Adam Jonas, an analyst at Morgan Stanley who has been widely concerned by Tesla investors, believes that Musk's email has a broader meaning for the industry. He said in a research report: "if the world's largest electric vehicle enterprise warns about employment and economy, investors should reconsider their expectations for profit margin and top line growth." On June 3, Tesla's share price fell by 9.2%, while the Nasdaq composite index fell by 2.5% on the same day.
On June 4, musk said that there would be no large-scale personnel changes in the company, and said that "the total number of employees will increase, and the number of salaried employees will be relatively stable". Financial analysts said that this statement is more reasonable because the company is stepping up to increase production capacity in new plants in Berlin and Austin, as well as large-scale expansion of the Shanghai plant. Dan ives, general manager of wadebush securities, said on Twitter: "I am glad to see musk retract his previous statement. Now the company has to move forward."
On June 5, Tesla's layoff storm finally ended. Some media released an article entitled "Tesla optimizes its operation by adjusting its employee recruitment and layoff procedures", and musk called the content of this article "accurate". Some observers pointed out that the content of this article is very similar to the press release that Tesla should have released a few days ago.