Dusseldorf Another fun from Elon Musk. A few months ago, the CEO of the US electric car manufacturer Tesla awarded himself the title of “Techno-King”, recorded in a mandatory notification to the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Only one other top Tesla manager also received a new title: Zach Kirkhorn, 34, Chief Financial Officer, became “Master of Coin”.
Musk is often at odds with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, and he always makes fun of the SEC with the names that are not meant very seriously. But the announcement contained an award for Kirkhorn: The man is of great importance in the company – and now even represents Musk in the announcement of the quarterly results.
Kirkhorn recently made his first appearance. And the numbers were impressive: Tesla achieved record profits, reported excellent delivery figures – and the share soon rose so strongly that Tesla’s market capitalization exceeded the trillion dollar mark. “Zach is incredibly talented,” said Musk when he took office.
Kirkhorn has been running Tesla’s financial operations since the beginning of 2019. Investors reacted nervously at the time, and the share fell. Nobody knew the manager, while his predecessor Deepak Ahuja was significantly older and had a lot of experience. “I never heard of Kirkhorn,” Morningstar analyst David Whiston said of the current CFO.
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Kirkhorn’s assumption of office also came at a difficult time. Almost at the same time, CEO Musk announced that he would close all Tesla stores and only sell the vehicles via the Internet. In this way he wanted to save money in order to be able to lower the price of the “Model 3.” Apparently a poorly thought-out plan, a few weeks later Musk took everything back.
The cash on hand increased significantly
But the investors who sold their shares at the time were wrong about Kirkhorn. The man has the finances firmly under control, for example, he significantly increased the company’s cash holdings – in 2020 alone it was twelve billion dollars. The American also introduced intelligent market communication at Tesla: promise less, deliver more. During his time as Chief Financial Officer, market capitalization rose from $ 53 billion to just under $ 1.1 trillion today.
“People still don’t know who Zach really is, but they know what he’s achieved,” says Gene Munster, founder of the venture capital firm Loup Ventures. “He’s shy and doesn’t like speaking in public. But what he has achieved is a remarkable U-turn. ”Indeed: Kirkhorn made his first solo appearance a few days ago, announcing record sales of $ 13.76 billion and a profit of $ 1.62 billion.
Kirkhorn’s career is like something out of a picture book. He studied economics and mechanical engineering at the University of Pennsylvania before working as a consultant at McKinsey for almost three years. An important station in professional and personal respects. It was then that Kirkhorn met his future husband Daniel Alexander Naughton, who is now a member of the board of Nomi Health, a US start-up from Austin (Texas) that wants to “simplify” the US healthcare sector as a payment service provider.
A third of life at Tesla
Naughton has only been with Nomi for three months. The job change is explained by Tesla’s move from San Francisco to the capital of Texas. Kirkhorn now also works there. Despite his young age, Kirkhorn is already a Tesla veteran. From McKinsey, he moved to Tesla’s finance department in 2010, just a few months before the electric car manufacturer went public. In mathematical terms, Kirkhorn spent almost a third of his life at Tesla.
The company was only looking up, with a good every two years he was promoted. An MBA degree at Harvard in 2013 did not prevent him from doing so, which according to Musk would not have been necessary. As is well known, the Tesla boss thinks little of business administration students, it is better to study engineering or other tangible subjects.
Kirkhorn is apparently an exception.
More: Tesla defies delivery bottlenecks and writes record profit of 1.6 billion US dollars.