Shares of Tesla Inc. fell nearly 3% Monday, reversing an earlier premarket gain, after the electric-vehicle giant said that Chief Financial Officer Zachary Kirkhorn was stepping down after four years in the role and 13 years with the company.
Tesla’s stock
TSLA,
was up about 0.6% just before the CFO departure disclosure. Tesla’s executive team has been relatively stable for the past couple of years, following a spate of departures in 2018 and 2019, including the exit in July 2019 of Chief Technology Officer J.B. Straubel and Deepak Ahuja, Tesla’s previous CFO, in January of that same year.
Read more: Tesla’s key executive departures, in one handy list
The stock fell 2.9% in morning trading, putting them on track for a six-week closing low.
Tesla said it named Chief Accounting Officer Vaibhav Taneja as CFO. Taneja has been Tesla’s CAO since March 2019, and was corporate controller from May 2018. Tesla said Kirkhorn will serve Tesla through the end of the year to help support the transition.
Kirkhorn will be replaced by “an experienced successor,” Ben Kallo at Baird said in a note Monday.
Besides being chief accounting officer, Taneja was corporate controller and assistant corporate controller, and was previously a SolarCity Corp. executive before Tesla bought the solar-power company in 2016. Taneja also brings over 16 years of experience with PwC, Kallo said.
In March 2021, Chief Executive Elon Musk had named himself and Zach Kirkhorn as respectively “Chief Technoking” and “Master of Coin” of Tesla.
Jerome Guillen, then president of Tesla Heavy Trucking, departed in June 2021 and was one of the last of Musk’s original lieutenants at the EV maker. Tesla at the time issued a two-sentence announcement upon Guillen’s departure.
Kirkhorn joined Tesla in 2010 as an analyst, and took over as CFO in January 2019 shortly after Ahuja ended a second stint as Tesla CFO. Ahuja announced his retirement in 2015 after steering Tesla through the 2008 crisis, but returned to Tesla in 2017 amid the production ramp for the Model 3 sedan.
At Tesla’s post-earnings calls, Kirkhorn’s steady persona often has been in stark contrast with Musk’s more animated personality, with Kirkhorn occasionally seeming to keep Musk in check.
Tesla stock has rallied 44.9% over the past three months, while the S&P 500
SPX,
has gained 8.8%.
Read the full article here
