Elon Musk got defensive on Thursday evening after a meme suggested he may be spending a little too much time on Twitter and not enough time on his electric vehicle company.
“To be clear, I’m spending <5% (but actually) of my time on the Twitter acquisition. It ain’t rocket science!” the Tesla CEO exclaimed in a tweet, attached with a photo of the meme.
The meme shows a woman walking past a couple, distracting the boyfriend and annoying the man’s girlfriend. The woman walking past was Twitter, the disapproving other woman was Tesla, and the distracted man was of course Elon Musk.
Musk may feel the need to defend his Twitter acquisition in order to soothe investor worries over the declining share price of Tesla, which has fallen by 28% since Musk first offered to acquire the social network for $44 billion on Apr. 14.
Since launching his bid to take Twitter private, $285 billion has been wiped off Tesla’s market capitalization and Musk’s net worth has sunk by $49 billion.
Musk added a series of new Tesla milestones to prove that his attention wasn’t waning, including his recently opened Giga Texas factory and SpaceX’s Starbase rocket launch site in Boca Chica, Texas.
He said “Tesla is on my mind 24/7,” adding “So may seem like below, but not true.”
The defensive stance comes a day after an article was published by Insider claiming Musk had exposed himself to a flight attendant on SpaceX and sexually propositioned her.
Musk characterized the story as a “politically motivated hit piece.”
Waning attentions and calls for a buyback
The value of Tesla began to fall precipitously after Musk first revealed that he had bought a near 10% stake in Twitter on Apr. 4.
By the time he made a formal offer to buy Twitter 10 days later, Tesla shares had fallen by 14% and on the day Musk’s buyout offer was accepted, shares in Tesla slid another 12%.
Musk’s defensive stance also comes a day after Tesla got kicked out of the S&P sustainability ESG index. Shares in the company fell another 6% Thursday amid a wider market tumble.
Leo KoGuan, a Singapore-based billionaire and Tesla’s third-largest individual investor, on Thursday called on Tesla to buy back shares, indicating some investors may be getting restless over the nosedive in the electric vehicle company’s share price. Tesla has never paid a cash dividend or bought back its shares, instead choosing to reinvest everything into its business to finance further growth.
“Tesla must announce immediately and buy back $5 billion of Tesla shares from its free cash flow this year and $10 billion from its free cash flow next year, without effecting its existing $18 billion cash reserves with ZERO debt,” KoGuan said in a Twitter message to Tesla’s head of investor relations, Martin Viecha.
“We, Tesla bulls, need more support,” KoGuan tweeted, pointing to the company’s cash reserves, tweeting “Tesla can invest in (Full Self-Driving), bot and factories while buying back its undervalued stocks. Shock and wake up few braindead analysts to their senses.”
KoGuan finished the Twitter note with his full support of Tesla, saying “Whenever I have cash, I have been buying Tesla shares and keep these shares until 2030 or longer. Forever and ever.”