Protests against Elon Musk and Tesla have been spreading around the world thanks to the CEO\u2019s involvement in the Trump administration. Now those protests are listed as an official \u201crisk factor\u201d in paperwork Tesla is required to file with federal regulators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The new language, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday morning, shows the backlash against Musk has risen to such a level that Tesla\u2019s lawyers feel the need to warn investors it could damage the company\u2019s brand and business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While risk factors are typically written to be broad and overly cautious, sometimes the inclusion of new (or removal of old) language can signal what issues or developments are most important to a company like Tesla and, crucially, its legal team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For years, Tesla has included a risk factor informing investors that \u201cTesla\u2019s products, business, results of operations, and statements and actions of Tesla and its management are subject to significant amounts of commentary by a range of third parties.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This risk factor warned this \u201ccriticism, which may be exaggerated or unfounded, such as speculation regarding the sufficiency or stability of our management team\u201d could \u201charm our business and make it more difficult to raise additional funds if needed,\u201d according to language in the company\u2019s most recent annual report filed in January.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That language was changed Wednesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tesla updated the risk factor language to now include the criticism \u201chas incited protests, some escalating to violence targeting our operations, products and personnel.\u201d Tesla\u2019s lawyers also expanded what\u2019s at risk, saying negative perceptions resulting from the protests, along with the broader criticism of the company, \u201cmay harm our brand and our business (including sales) and make it more difficult to raise additional funds if needed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Protests against Elon Musk and Tesla have been spreading around the world thanks to the CEO\u2019s involvement in the Trump administration. Now those protests are listed as an official \u201crisk factor\u201d in paperwork Tesla is required to file with federal regulators. The new language, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday morning, shows<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4860,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-4859","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-trending"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/echocurrentnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/echocurrentnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/echocurrentnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/echocurrentnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/echocurrentnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4859"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/echocurrentnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4859\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4861,"href":"https:\/\/echocurrentnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4859\/revisions\/4861"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/echocurrentnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/echocurrentnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/echocurrentnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/echocurrentnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}