[News-Oxcart Network]
On February 8, Tesla CEO Musk sent a number of tweets, attacking the traditional media for often spreading negative news to incite hatred.
Musk writes that most of the media is trying to find out "what's the worst thing that happens on Earth every day?" ”
"It's true that something bad happens on this planet every day, but focusing on those alone doesn't accurately portray reality."
He added, "You should see the sunny side of life. ”
It all started a few hours ago, when an Ark Investment Management executive voiced a voice on the Internet to defend Tras: "It's very strange that the Internet tries to bully, threaten, blackmail and intimidate us to abandon Tesla."
Musk agreed, replying: "The 'fear, uncertainty and doubt' campaign against Tesla in 2017-2019 is still easy to find on Twitter. ”
On February 7, Tesla's 10-K statement to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was disclosed that the performance of car sales was excellent.
According to the documents, in 2021, Tesla achieved revenue of $53.823 billion, an increase of 71% year-on-year; net profit attributable to shareholders reached $5.519 billion, an increase of 665% year-on-year. Tesla sold more than 936,000 electric vehicles in 2021, an 87% increase from 2020 and the world's largest sales volume.
However, the mainstream media in the United States focused on "about $101 million in impairment losses due to changes in the book value of Bitcoin" and "the company received a SEC subpoena involving Musk's public statements" and "the company received a SEC subpoena involving Musk's public remarks."
It is worth noting, though, that Tesla said that the reason for the bitcoin impairment is due to accounting rules: virtual currency assets are considered intangible assets with an uncertain useful life, so at any time after the acquisition, if the fair value of such assets is lower than the carrying amount, the company will need to recognize impairment charges.
Moreover, compared to Tesla's net profit of up to $5.519 billion, the amount of impairment loss mentioned above is not large. As of the end of last year, Tesla still held nearly $1.99 billion (about 12.6 billion yuan) of bitcoin.
As for Tesla's second subpoena from the SEC, it involves a recurring topic: In 2018, Musk tweeted that he tried to take Tesla private, and then was accused of securities fraud by the US SEC. Since then, Musk and the SEC have been in a state of opposition.
It is worth mentioning that Musk's remarks in 2018 have not yet been completed to this day, in addition to attracting regulatory investigations. In last week's Tesla investor class action case, Musk's lawyers said the defendants' remarks about considering taking the company private at the time were "completely true."
This is not the first time Musk has "broken up" with the US media. In fact, Musk has repeatedly bombarded the US media on social media, accusing them of hypocrisy, publishing false news, and doing whatever it takes to spend money on advertising.
Write at the end
Putting aside the war of words between Musk and the media, Musk has set his 2022 electric vehicle sales target as a year-on-year increase of "easily more than 50%", that is, more than 1.4 million vehicles. All this is based on the fact that Tesla has no new cars released this year, and the main line will focus on expanding production. What can be seen is that not only technology, but also scale is becoming Tesla's moat.