(Bloomberg) – Elon Musk provoked the US Securities and Exchange Commission in the course of taking a lap of victory on Twitter over the stock price of Tesla Inc ..
The CEO first teased the short sellers in a series of tweets, writing that the electric car maker “would make fabulous shorts in radiant red satin with gold trim.” That’s an apparent reference to the jokes he’s repeatedly made about sending “shorts” to investors betting on Tesla stocks, such as hedge fund manager David Einhorn.
Musk, 49, wrote Thursday that he would send shorts to the SEC, referring to the agency again as the “Shortseller Enrichment Commission.” He first used that phrase in October 2018 after the regulator sued him for securities fraud.
Musk later tweeted a cryptic but profane game about the agency’s initials, prompting Ross Gerber, a fund manager who regularly interacts with him on Twitter, to write: “Dangerous.” Musk replied, “But sooo satisfying.”
Musk and the SEC have a combative history. The agency sued him in September 2018 for tweets he sent a month earlier, alleging that he had secured funds to make Tesla private at $ 420 a share. As part of a settlement agreement, Musk had to pay a $ 20 million fine, resign as Tesla president for three years, and have some of his tweets pre-approved by a company attorney.
The SEC brought Musk to court last year after he was unable to delete a tweet about Tesla’s production with his internal attorney. The two sides eventually agreed to amend the previous agreement to add specific issues about which the billionaire cannot tweet or otherwise communicate in writing without prior approval.
Hours after a federal judge signed the amended settlement in April 2019, then-SEC commissioner Robert Jackson publicly criticized him, saying in a statement that Musk had not been punished enough for not complying with restrictions on his Use of the social network.
In December 2018, Musk told “60 Minutes” that he did not respect the SEC. An agency spokesman declined to comment on his latest tweets.
Tesla revealed in February that the SEC sent the company a subpoena regarding “certain financial data and contracts,” including “regular financing agreements.” An analyst speculated that the regulator may have been investigating how the company managed to build an assembly plant near Shanghai last year while spending only $ 1.3 billion on capital expenditures.
A better-than-expected quarterly delivery report sent Tesla shares up 8% to a record close of $ 1,208.66 on Thursday. The action has almost tripled this year.
(Updates with additional tweets in the fourth paragraph).
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