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Investor's Corner

Tesla investors push for June 6 vote on overhaul of company board structure

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The Connecticut Retirement Plans and Trust Funds (CRPTF) filed a proposal with Tesla in an attempt to transition the governing board’s structure to “better meet challenges the company now faces as a maturing public company.”

The proposal will be voted on by shareholders in Tesla’s 2017 annual meeting on June 6th, 2017. In support of the proposal, the CRPTF sent a letter to investors advocating its position on the proposal, requesting they vote “FOR” the proposal.

It is looking for a change from the current structure by creating a board that would be up for election annually, as a means of creating a management team more focused on delivering near term results and to ensure “board independence and director succession planning”. The CRPTF nebulously notes that it is seeking the change to create more continuity in the company.

“We believe the annual election of directors will incentivize more consistent communication between the board and long-term shareholders and strengthen alignment of interests in addressing these challenges.”

The proposal specifically calls out several risk areas based on relationships between board members outside of Tesla:

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  • Both the Elon Musk Revocable Trust and Kimbal Musk, Elon Musk’s brother and a Tesla director, are investors in funds advised by Valor Management Corp., of which Mr. Gracias is CEO.
  • Mr. Ehrenpreis and a fund he manages are investors in SpaceX, a company founded and led by Elon Musk.
  • Mr. Jurvetson is a managing director of a firm that is a “significant stockholder” in SpaceX and the Elon Musk Revocable Trust is an investor in a fund managed by the firm.

The motion continues the push by the CRPTF to shift the governance model of Tesla to what it deems a more stable structure poised to set the company up to perform well against other companies of its size. The CRPTF previously pushed Tesla to add new members that were independent from Elon Musk, something the company said it was already working on in parallel to the effort by the CRPTF. The current board is comprised of members with complex financial and family ties to Musk including his brother Kimball who has been on the board since 2004 and holds a significant amount of Tesla stock.

The letter from the CRPTF ironically cites financial studies based on traditional business models without recognizing that Tesla’s success is largely as a result of its unwillingness to follow conventional wisdom, instead building businesses from a blank sheet of paper on up.

“Finally, we believe that annual accountability can lead to increased company performance. Academic studies have found that classified boards are associated with lower firm valuation, poorer pay/performance alignment, a lower likelihood of CEO termination in the event of poor performance, and a higher likelihood of value-destroying acquisitions. Annual director elections have also been found to correlate with greater R&D expenditures that are important for future success.”

In the past, Musk has railed publicly against external pressure to modify the current structure within Tesla which is understandable based on his history. He lost control of X.com through the merger with PayPal, and coming out of the eventual sale he vowed not to let future companies slip out of his control.

Source: Tesla Investor Relations

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Investor's Corner

Tesla gets its latest short from Michael Burry: ‘Happy it jumped back to this level’

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Credit: MarcoRP | X

Tesla short seller Michael Burry, the subject of the film “The Big Short,” where he was portrayed by Steve Carell, has revealed he has opened a new bet against the stock.

In a new update to his Substack newsletter in a post titled “Trading Post June 30, 2026,” Burry revealed a new set of bets against Tesla, Caterpillar, NVIDIA, Applied Materials Inc., and the iShares Semiconductor ETF.

In regard to Tesla, Burry wrote:

“And finally I shorted Tesla at 416.22. Happy it jumped back to this level.”

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This means Burry likely opened his new short position after the company’s recent rally on Wall Street, which saw Tesla shares sink in mid-May, only to recover to well over the $400 mark. Currently, shares trade at around $427.

The company saw a big Tuesday as shares climbed considerably, over 10 percent. The size of the Tesla short was not provided, nor did Burry give any information on the position’s structure, the number of shares, dollar value, or whether options were used in the short.

The Tesla and SpaceX merger everyone is talking about is quietly building

Over the years, Burry has been one of the more vocal critics of Tesla, calling its share price “media inflated,” and saying it was “ridiculously overvalued” as recently as December.

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The company has largely transitioned away from being known as an automotive company and instead is much more widely regarded as an AI play, mostly due to its Full Self-Driving efforts, Optimus robot development, and data collection related to both.

This has not pulled those skeptics away from being vocal about their distaste for how Tesla is valued, but there’s no denying that the company is a global force in many things, including sustainable energy, automotive, and AI.

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Investor's Corner

SpaceX gets initial stock coverage from Tesla’s biggest bull

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SpaceX Starship V3 flight 12
SpaceX Starship V3 flight 12 (Credit: SpaceX)

Wedbush Securities is initiating stock coverage on SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX), marking the first comments on the company since it went public several weeks ago. Wedbush and its analyst handling coverage, Dan Ives, are widely bullish on fellow Musk company Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA).

Ives wrote his first note initiating coverage of SpaceX shares on Wednesday with a $190 price target and an ‘Outperform’ rating. The firm believes the company is well positioned off of its IPO because of its wide array of projects, including AI compute power and infrastructure, connectivity projects, and launches.

“We view SpaceX as one of the most differentiated assets within the tech market with a strong footprint across its three core markets, with Starlink driving success with connectivity,” Ives wrote, “Starship launches leading to a demand flywheel and increasing deal flow for its Colossus clusters.”

Elon Musk called it Epic: The full story of SpaceX’s Starship Flight 12

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Wedbush leans heavily on Starlink, which they say is the “profitability driver given the strength of its recurring revenue base of ~12 million subscribers as of June 5th.” Ives believes Starlink is still in the “early innings” of penetrating the global telecommunications and broadband market, as it only holds less than a 1 percent share. However, this number is sure to increase over time.

It also highlights the importance of Starship, which it says is an “essential layer” of SpaceX’s overall success. SpaceX developing and displaying the ability to reuse rockets is a major cost and reliability advantage “as it reduces the necessary hardware launch costs while generating a feedback loop for future flights to improve their launch flight rate without accelerating capex spend.”

Finally, SpaceX’s recent AI/Compute projects are also very elementary, Ives writes. It is worth mentioning Wedbush said its $190 price target is derived from a valuation forecast that sees the company yielding roughly $2.48 trillion of implied enterprise value.

There are also some factors that Wedbush did not take into account with its initial coverage. The firm wrote in the note:

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“We note that there is optional value coming from Starship’s accelerating scale towards sub-$200/kg unit economics, orbital data centers, and enterprise AI monetization as these factors could drive meaningful upside but these face major hurdles, so we do not take that into account with our valuation.”

SpaceX shares are down just over 2 percent today, trading at around $167 at the time of publication.

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Elon Musk

Tesla Phone? Not quite, but close: analyst

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elon musk phone
Photo: Boss Hunting.com.au

For years, there have been images and videos across social media platforms that have reminded me of when I was a 15-year-old kid teased by “Xbox 720” videos on YouTube. These videos are of the supposed “Tesla Phone” that Elon Musk was secretly developing in between leading Tesla with its electric cars and SpaceX with its reusable rockets.

Although Musk has put those rumors to bed several times, it was never completely out of the realm that he could get involved in cell phones in some capacity. Think outside the box and more macro-level, though. Instead of reinventing the computer, Musk reinvented connectivity by developing Starlink with SpaceX.

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It could be something similar, TD Cowen analyst Gregory Williams said in a note last week, where he hinted SpaceX could be gathering some steam to acquire T-Mobile.

Williams said it would be the “clear choice” for SpaceX if it decided to go through with a network acquisition. He also suggested AT&T.

The move would be possible through selling more of its own stock, which would help SpaceX raise the money to purchase T-Mobile, which would cost roughly $300 billion. It could be one of the moves SpaceX makes post-IPO in terms of an acquisition: it already acquired Cursor AI for $60 billion.

Other analysts, like Dan Ives of Wedbush, believe SpaceX and Tesla will eventually merge into one anyway, and that conglomeration could come as soon as this year, some have said.

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The implications of SpaceX purchasing T-Mobile are massive. A combined entity would create a truly ubiquitous network: T-Mobile’s terrestrial 5G towers and Starlink’s growing constellation of Direct-to-Cell satellites. This would essentially eliminate dead zones across the U.S. and potentially globally.

SpaceX would instantly become a full-scale facilities-based carrier with satellite differentiation; a huge advantage. This would pressure AT&T and Verizon heavily.

There are also concerns like a potential reduction in long-term competition, and of course, a deal of that size would face intense scrutiny from government agencies.

The strategic fit is compelling due to the existing Starlink–T-Mobile partnership and complementary technologies (space + terrestrial). It could create a dominant integrated communications player. However, the regulatory, financial, and execution hurdles are enormous — this remains highly speculative with no indication SpaceX is actively pursuing it right now.

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