Elon Musk Can't Take His Own Advice and Tesla Falls Again

(Bloomberg) -- Elon Musk can't follow his own advice.

Even after scolding himself for engaging with detractors on Twitter, the Tesla Inc. chief executive officer was at it again this weekend. Shares of the electric-car maker fell as much as 4 percent Monday after Musk called a British cave explorer who had criticized him a pedophile. The tweet has been deleted.

Controversial outbursts are neither new nor unusual for Musk, who frequently spars with critics and investors betting against his company. In May, another such histrionic kicked off a sharp decline in Tesla shares: The CEO cut off analysts' queries about the company's capital requirements and orders for the Model 3 sedan during a conference call, calling them “boring, bonehead questions.”

After Tesla shares fell 22 percent in March -- the steepest monthly drop in more than seven years -- Musk jokingly tweeted on April Fools' Day that the company had gone bankrupt. The following week, he hung up on the chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board who called to tell him the agency was booting Tesla representatives from the investigation of a fatal crash involving a Model X driver. The company had published a series of blog posts that cast blame on the deceased driver.

The latest Twitter fit came after British diver Vern Unsworth, a volunteer who played a key role in organizing the rescue of 12 boys from a flooded Thai cave last week, dismissed Musk's effort to save the boys using a “kid-size submarine,” calling it a “PR stunt” in an interview with CNN. Musk didn't name Unsworth in his series of tweets over the weekend, though he said he would make a video to prove that the device could have helped the rescue.

While investors following Tesla are a starkly polarized bunch, there's one thing many of them probably can agree on: As the company struggles to profitably boost production of its Model 3 sedan, now's the time to keep distractions to a minimum.

Read more: Tesla Model 3 critic sees possible 30% profit margin

One of the company's biggest investors last week advised Musk to focus on the core tasks ahead for Tesla.

“We are very supportive, but we would like peace and execution at this stage,” James Anderson, a partner and portfolio manager at Baillie Gifford & Co., Tesla's fourth-largest shareholder, said Wednesday in a Bloomberg Television interview.

Tesla shares dropped 2.8 percent at Monday's close and have now traded down 0.4 percent this year.

Earlier this month, Musk said in an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek that he would engage with his detractors on Twitter less often. “I have made the mistaken assumption — and I will attempt to be better at this — of thinking that because somebody is on Twitter and is attacking me that it is open season. And that is my mistake,” he said. “I will correct it.”

--With assistance from Craig Trudell and Tom Randall.

To contact the reporter on this story: Esha Dey in New York at edey@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Courtney Dentch at cdentch1@bloomberg.net, ;Craig Trudell at ctrudell1@bloomberg.net, Christiana Sciaudone

©2018 Bloomberg L.P.