Elon Musk, the co-founder and CEO of Tesla, has publicly stated his decision that Tesla to stay public, in a response to his announcement earlier this month where he was considering making the company private.
Reminiscing about the start of the public Tesla in 2010, Musk credits almost all of the company’s investors for supporting them since Tesla’s budding stage. Emphasizing the importance of Tesla’s investors Musk made his final decision after consulting them.
He also consulted Goldman Sachs, Silver Lake and Morgan Stanley who “have world-class expertise” in the matters of sustainable energy and company success, about taking Tesla private and processing all the incoming interest received from investors to fund a go-private transaction.
Even the company’s shareholder’s views about Tesla’s best long-term interests were taken into consideration. Musk got the picture that majority of Tesla’s existing shareholders believe that the company should remain public, with some institutional shareholders facing internal compliance issues that limit how much they can invest in a private company and there is no proven path for most retail investors to own shares in a private company.
Moreover, Musk believes that they must stay focused on ramping Model 3 and becoming profitable so as to achieve their mission of advancing sustainable energy through financial sustainability. So he opted out of advancing on a time-consuming and challenging path of going private.
By and by, he also stated that Tesla has “more than enough” funding to go private.
On August 24, with the nod from the Board of Directors, Musk has made the final decision to remain public.
Musk reiterates their mission: “building products that people love and that make a difference to the shared future of life on Earth,” and states that the Tesla team’s efforts now is to go the “sustainably profitable” way to proceed with the promising Model 3.
