Tesla’s Elon Musk defends his strange conference call performance

In response to a question by RBC’s Joseph Spak on the call about Model 3 reservations, Musk said, “We’re going to go to YouTube. Sorry. These questions are so dry. They’re killing me.”

Despite Musk’s characterization of Sacconaghi and Spak as short sellers, the two have hold ratings on Tesla’s stock.

He then took several questions from Galileo Russell, a 25-year-old retail investor and owner of a YouTube Channel who asked Musk on Twitter if he could be on the earnings call, which is normally reserved for analysts, professional investors and sometimes, the media.

His failure to address questions from the analysts about Tesla’s finances helped push the stock down 5.6 percent on Thursday. Analysts and investors said the performance hurt their confidence in Musk as the company’s leader. Morgan Stanley’s Adam Jonas said it was the most unusual call he’s experienced in 20 years.

Sacconaghi blasted Musk on Thursday on CNBC, saying, “This is a financial analyst call, this is not a TED talk.”

Musk continued on Twitter to argue with critics about his performance and defend his failure to answer questions from most of the analysts on the call. As this story was being published Musk was beginning a thread as to why the analyst questions were not “valid.”

This is a developing story. Check back for updates

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