Musk defends Tesla conference call snub of analysts

[May 04, 2018]  (Reuters) - Tesla Inc  Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk defended the snub of two Wall Street analysts on a conference call, proclaiming in a tweet on Friday that they "were trying to justify their Tesla short thesis."

SpaceX founder Elon Musk pauses at a press conference following the first launch of a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, U.S., February 6, 2018. REUTERS/Joe Skipper

Musk's antics on the bizarre call pushed the electric vehicle maker's shares down on Thursday, with several analysts making scathing comments and at least three brokerages cutting price targets on the stock.

"The 'dry' questions were not asked by investors, but rather by two sell-side analysts who were trying to justify their Tesla short thesis. They are actually on the *opposite* side of investors," Musk tweeted. (http://bit.ly/2jrfYDr)

"(the questions) were neither valid nor pertinent," he said.

In the call, Musk devoted 23 minutes in taking questions from a 25-year-old Tesla investor, Galileo Russell, who owns an YouTube investment channel called HyperChange TV.

"HyperChange represented actual investors, so I switched to them," Musk wrote in another tweet.

(Reporting by Supantha Mukherjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Bernard Orr)

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