Vice President of Investor Relations at Tesla Martin Viecha announced on Tuesday that he would be leaving the company. Viecha has held this position for the past seven years and is the third top executive to announce their departure from the company within the past two weeks.
Viecha’s announcement was made at the end of a highly important first-quarter earnings call after the company’s worst quarter in four years. He confirmed his departure on LinkedIn and X shortly after. “About a month ago, I spoke with Elon and [Chief Financial Officer] Vaibhav [Taneja] to announce that I’m going to be retiring from the world of investor relations and moving on,” Viecha wrote. “Working for Tesla for the past ~7 years has been the greatest privilege of my professional life.” He added that he was looking forward to spending time with his family while taking a break from work.
This latest resignation came shortly after that of Senior Vice President Drew Baglino, who officially left the company last week. Baglino had been with Tesla for over eighteen years and spearheaded the engineering and technical development of Tesla’s car batteries. Rohan Patel, the company’s vice president of public policy and business development, announced that he would part ways with Tesla via an X post on April 15. Tesla is a very private company, and only four top executives have been publicly named, Viecha among them. This makes his departure—and those of Patel and Baglino—even more conspicuous.
The fact that these announcements have been made at a rocky time for the company does not feel like a coincidence. Baglino and Viecha were both very familiar, and their departures left the company’s relationship with their investors on shaky ground. The earnings call was comforting and sent Tesla’s stock back up 12% in after-hours trading, but the overall feeling among investors is still not positive. Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s behavior over the past few years has left people questioning the company’s direction, and the resignation of several top executives has not helped.
Analysts Dan Ives and Ross Gerber weighed in on the situation in a discussion on CNBC. Ives praised Musk’s tempered performance on the earnings call, saying he presented himself as “an adult in the room.” Gerber agreed that Musk was unusually professional on the call but said Viecha’s resignation undermined this. “He is the glue between management and shareholders and investors,” said Gerber of Viecha. He added that Musk “continues to lose seasoned top executives during this really important transition, and I find that to be concerning.” Gerber went on to say that Musk’s plan outlined on the call was solid but that the demand for Tesla’s vehicles was low in general.
Tesla’s plans have frequently been questioned and criticized, and Musk’s outspoken attitude and odd behavior have not improved public opinion of the brand. His takeover of X (formerly known as Twitter) and subsequent rebrand was not well received and put him more in the public eye than ever before.
