He paused.
Elon Musk There is no sound from the other side, but there is no sign of hanging up.
"The layoff is not your failure.
Tesla climbed out of the Model 3 production hell and can produce more than 6,000 vehicles per week, which is three times the rate of two years ago.
You laid off 7% of your full-time employees, not because Tesla is no longer working, but because you want to reduce the price of Model 3 to a range that the Volkswagen market can accept with less cost.
It's not about shrinking, it's about focusing resources in the right places."
He waited for two seconds and then said something.
"I believe that in two years' time, Tesla's Model 3 and Model Y will redefine the standards of the electric vehicle market.
You're not running a quarter, you're running a timeline that no one has ever run."
On the other end of the phone, Elon Musk was silent for a long time.
When it reached Zhao Chen, I thought the signal was broken.
Then he heard a soft laugh.
Not the kind of maniacal laughter at a press conference, but the kind of chuckle with a hint of relief that one would make at three o'clock in the morning when a colleague is still awake in the office.
"You always give me a reason to keep doing it when I need it most."
He paused and said, "Zhao, thank you."
Zhao Chen didn't answer, just switched the phone to the other ear.
"The line 300 US Dollar, Wall Street and Short Sellers will come back.
I don't know when they will come back, but I know that when they come back, they will be more violent than the last time.
What you need to be prepared for is not to panic when the stock price breaks through 300.
It's not that Tesla's Fundamentals has changed, it's someone using prices to create panic.
Your Fundamentals is in your hands - the progress of the Shanghai factory, the Capacity Ramp-Up of Model 3, and the research and development direction of Optimus.
These are your destiny. Stock prices are not."
"I know." Elon Musk's voice regained a certain hardness - it was the first time for Zhao Chen to hear a person's voice turn from ashes to fire on the phone.
It was as if the person on the other end of the phone climbed out of an airplane on the edge of a cliff and sat back in the cockpit.
After hanging up the phone, Zhao Chen leaned on the back of the sofa, turned the phone over and placed it on the coffee table.
Su Wantang walked out of the inner room, holding the freshly brewed Pu'er in his hand, and sat down next to him without speaking.
I just took away the cold tea cup from his hand and put the warm cup into his hand.
January 28, EST, before the market opens.
It has been ten days since Tesla's layoff storm.
In the past ten days, the Tesla stock price has experienced extremely fierce competition at the 300 US Dollar mark--
After it fell below, it was pulled back by copying the chassis, and then it fell below and was pulled back again, but there was something else that really caused the platform to collapse.
Zhao Chen is sitting in front of Bloomberg Terminal in hotel Suite, and the real-time quotation of Nvidia is switched on the screen.
He waited for a long time with his teacup in hand. What he was waiting for was not the comeback of Tesla's Short Sellers, but this Financial Report.
Nvidia issued a brief financial guidance update before the market opened. Printing out the full text would only fill half an A4 paper.
The revenue forecast for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2018 is lowered from the previous 2.7 billion US Dollar to 2.2 billion US Dollar, a decrease of approximately 18.5%.
The reasons were lower-than-expected sales of games and the Data Center platform and deteriorating macroeconomic conditions, especially in the China.
Huang Renxun's statement was restrained and low-key, admitting that the digestion of channel inventory was much slower than expected.
It will take time for the demand for mid-range Pascal architecture graphics cards to recover, and the new generation Turing Architecture and RTX 20 Series still need to "climb" in terms of pricing and market acceptance.
Pre-market trading has already reacted --
The stock price of Nvidia plunged straight from last week's closing price of around 160 US Dollar, and instantly penetrated 150 US Dollar.
After the market opened, sell orders for more than 100,000 shares piled up in front of the 140 US Dollar mark. The K line on Time-sharing Chart was like an axe, cutting vertically into 138 US Dollar.
It closed at 138.01 US Dollar, a one-day plunge of 14%. The market value evaporated by more than 13 billion US Dollar, and the stock price returned to the level of August 2017.
The entire Wall Street chip stocks were dragged down by Nvidia--
AMD fell by more than 7%, Micron fell by nearly 3%, and Philadelphia Semiconductor Index closed down by nearly 3% that day.
Era Vanguard's losses were very large.
65 million shares, comprehensive cost 144.5 US Dollar, stock price 138 US Dollar.
The floating loss per share exceeded 6.5 US Dollar, and the total floating loss exceeded 420 million US Dollar.
From the time Nvidia started to build a position when Financial Report plummeted in November last year, to the SoftBank liquidation window period in December, when SoftBank started to accumulate funds,
Lin Shicheng has achieved the ultimate in rhythm and cost control, but it cannot withstand the loss of more than 400 million US Dollar's book value in one day.
When Chen Xi calculated the floating loss data, the line of red numbers popped up on the screen, which looked shocking.
But Zhao Chen didn't panic.
What surprised him was that Tesla Short Sellers didn't take any positive action--
Even when the stock price of Tesla was closest to the integer mark of 300 US Dollar during intraday trading.
Previously, Short Selling's accounts for several stocks corresponded to several shares of funds from different sources - all of them have ceased operations in the past day or two.
Zhao Chen sat on the sofa and stared at the time-sharing line of Tesla. His fingers slowly circled around the edge of the teacup, then he put the teacup down and said:
There are only two explanations for this - either they are hoarding more chips and waiting for more terrible events to break out as new catalysts.
Either the excessive selling due to previous layoffs has stretched the ammunition of some institutions and forced them to take a break.
There is another possibility: Era Vanguard was not targeted.
He couldn't believe this possibility.
He didn't dare to take it lightly until Tesla's Fundamentals didn't get better.
At this moment, Shan City on the other side of the ocean was approaching Spring Festival.
Every year before and after this festival, Su Wantang habitually starts to teach them what to arrange when Lunar New Year's Eve returns home--
But at this moment, an unexpected incident caused the East US market to immediately fluctuate and subsequently broke Zhao Chen's original plan to rest here.
Following the round of performance guidance cuts in February and the gradual subsidence of the rush to start production last year, the stock price seemed to be forming a safety cushion.
Zhao Chen considered temporarily handing over US Stocks to Lin Shicheng and then flew back to China once with Su Wantang and Chen Xi.
Before the incident happened, people at Henglong also frequently urged him to arrange to open Board of Directors:
Shen Jue has also sent messages many times saying that he needs to be present to sort out the summary minutes of the last few Strategic Investment audits before the year.
What's more interesting is that he had a brief exchange of this content with Shen Jue through a simple phone call.
Zhao Chen went back and held a brief meeting.