David Einhorn Taunts Elon Musk, Revives Jabs at Tesla Billing Practices

(Bloomberg) -- Short seller David Einhorn continued his long-running war with Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk, saying he was “beginning to wonder whether your accounts receivable exist” and renewing a meeting request with the company’s chief financial officer.

Einhorn’s hedge fund, Greenlight Capital, has lost money in recent months on its bet against Tesla shares, which have surged since the company reported a surprise third-quarter profit in October. But the stock posted its biggest drop in nearly two months on Friday after Musk introduced a new pickup with a polarizing design.

The well-known bear on Tesla’s stock said in a Twitter post he had yet to hear back from the electric-car maker’s investor relations department more than a week after asking for an explanation about alleged discrepancies in its accounting practices. Einhorn also reiterated his call for a meeting with Tesla CFO Zach Kirkhorn and a tour of the company’s production facilities.

Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Einhorn’s latest tweet.

Einhorn’s social media salvo comes on a day when Tesla’s stock sank following the reveal late Thursday of its planned Cybertruck. Tesla shares pared a drop of as much as 7% to trade down 6.1% to $333.28 as of 3:18 p.m. in New York.

Musk taunted Einhorn earlier this month and said he read Greenlight Capital’s third-quarter investor letter that was critical of the carmaker.

“It is understandable that you wish to save face with your investors, given the losses you suffered from Tesla’s successful third quarter,” Musk wrote. “You have our sympathies.”

In August, Einhorn called on Musk to resign after Business Insider reported on “Project Titan,” the company’s internal effort to inspect all roofs that had solar panels and potentially faulty connectors in the wake of some rooftop solar fires. Last year, Musk sent Einhorn a pair of “short shorts.”

Einhorn said on a Nov. 7 conference call that Greenlight remained short on Tesla, even though the position hurt its performance during the period. He added that he’d been surprised by the stock’s resilience, given “relentless negative news and what appears to be an end of the company’s growth trajectory,” according to a transcript.

To contact the reporters on this story: Sam Mamudi in New York at smamudi@bloomberg.net;Dana Hull in San Francisco at dhull12@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Chester Dawson at cdawson54@bloomberg.net, ;Alan Goldstein at agoldstein5@bloomberg.net, Brendan Case

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