Today’s Pickup: Tesla shares slump after a bizarre post-earnings call

Good day,

All is not well in the Tesla camp, as the company’s shares fell again by over 8% in the last 24 hours, despite the company exceeding expectations in revenue growth by over 26% over last year. The slump could be attributed to Elon Musk himself, who in what can only be called a brain-fade, said he doesn’t care about the desires of Tesla’s day traders and asked them to sell his company’s stock and not buy it.

His refusal to answer “boring” questions put forth by Tesla’s investors during the company’s post-earnings conference call added fuel to the mini flash-crash of the day. Nonetheless, Musk was bullish about the prospects of Tesla, discussing the construction of a new Model Y factory, and confirming that the location of the second Gigafactory would be in China.

Did you know?

Spot freight market activity continued to build during the week ending April 28 as the number of loads on the DAT network of load boards increased 3.1% and truck posts rose 2.6%. National van and refrigerated load-to-truck ratios dipped while the flatbed load-to-truck ratio exceeded 100 for the fifth straight week.

Quotable:

“Blockchain is one of those technologies that everybody could benefit from. There are so many use cases in here. It can help with tracking of goods, be it containers or packages – almost any physical product. If you are a taking a pill, you would want to know if that is an authentic one and not counterfeit. It is the same with food, where if there is a problem we can trace it back to the origin and contain an outbreak if any.”

– Gil Perez, Senior VP of Product and Innovation at SA

In other news:

Unblocking the blockchain: beyond the hype

The industry giants leading the blockchain charge are backing closed, permission-based blockchain initiatives, which are bound to limit their effectiveness in the long run. Here’s how to unleash the full potential of blockchain. (Inbound Logistics)

Ford broadens recall of transit vans

Ford Motor Company is adding an estimated 26,000 2015 to 2017 Ford Transit full-size vans equipped with a trailer tow module to an existing recall — bringing the total recall in North America to nearly 99,900 vehicles. (Truckinginfo)

Electrification finds its ground zero in California

Expanding options for battery-electric technology and hybrid-electric and natural-gas engines are converging alongside efforts to protect forthcoming clear-air regulations, and longtime industry players must be ready to react to this evolving landscape, panelists said here at the Advanced Clean Transportation Expo, held April 30-May 3. (Transport Topics)

Bullish Atlas Air sees strong Q1 and expects 19% volume growth in 2018 – despite IATA gloom

Growing volumes and rising yields saw Atlas Air yesterday announce an increase in first quarter (The Loadstar)

Freight demand pushes truck-order backlog to near record level

Orders for heavy-duty trucks slipped from historic highs in April, as manufacturers of big rigs say they are building up production (WSJ)

Final Thoughts:

Data from the Census Bureau showed that new factory orders rose an impressive 1.6% in March from January’s levels. This slightly exceeded consensus estimates of a 1.3% increase and follows a 1.6% gain in the previous month that was larger than initially reported.

Much of this increase in manufacturing orders was expected after the advance report last week on durable goods orders. A surge in commercial aircraft orders helped boost the durable goods side of the manufacturing sector, which otherwise saw a modest monthly gain.

Hammer down everyone!

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