For Investors, Tesla’s Musk Remains One of America’s Greatest CEOs

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 13, 5:50AM EST · Published Jul 12, 9:45AM EDT

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For Investors, Tesla’s Musk Remains One of America’s Greatest CEOs — © Wikimedia Commons (Steve Jurvetson)

Over the past five years, shares of Tesla Motors Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA) have risen 667%. By way of comparison, Amazon.com Inc.’s (NASDAQ: AMZN) shares have risen 248% over the same period. Tesla may be in the midst of investigations about whether it disclosed the death of one of its car owners and the overall safety of its Autopilot system. However, the system has not been entirely blamed for recent crashes. Tesla’s stock price has weathered other challenges. It might well weather these.

It would be wrong to shrug off the recent accidents, although the driver of at least one of the cars has been ticketed for his driving at the time of the crash. According to Bloomberg:

Pennsylvania State Police cited the driver of a Tesla Model X sport utility vehicle involved in a July 1 crash that may have involved Autopilot technology for careless driving, according to a report released Monday. Meanwhile, another Tesla driver has told Montana police that Autopilot was engaged during an accident that occurred on Saturday.

Another case against Musk is that he has failed to meet an ambitious delivery schedule, as well as concerns that the new inexpensive Model 3 next year won’t launch on time. Critics also say his goal of delivering 500,000 cars a year by the end of the decade is improbable. That likely means Tesla’s Gigafactory full production will not happen in 2020 as Musk has said.

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Finally, investors worry that the Tesla takeover of SolarCity Corp. (NASDAQ: SCTY) is financially self-serving for Musk and his closest associates. Many critics say the two businesses are barely related.

Holes in Musk’s armor have started to appear, as the press and Wall Street have pointed out for several weeks.

Whether Musk is nothing more than a showman remains an open question. Is he a showman like Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who drove his company to low margins as part of a plan to make Amazon the leader of e-commerce in the United States, one of the world’s largest cloud companies and a major competitor in the streaming media sector? Musk has years to go to prove he is anywhere close to a match for Bezos.

While Wall Street waits all the years it will take to find out what class of CEO he is, Musk has made his long-term investors a fortune.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.