Tesla Shares Fall After CFO Deepak Ahuja Says He is Leaving… Again

Shares of Tesla were hit hard on Thursday after Wall Street learned that the company’s CFO Deepak Ahuja is planning to retire sometime this year.

This is the second time Ahuja will be leaving the company. He joined the electric vehicle maker in 2008 and left in 2015. He then returned in 2017 to replace then CFO Jason Wheeler.

Ahuja will be replaced by Tesla’s vice president of finance, Zach Kirkhorn. “I feel really good about Zach taking over,” Ahuja said. “He’s proven himself over the years with many tough challenges he’s worked on.”

Kirkhorn said, “I’ve been deep in the operations of every major program of the company from Roadster to … scaling our energy business and more things to come. I feel we’re starting 2019 with a very strong financial foundation. We have enough cash to start new programs and develop new technologies.” Kirkhorn has been with Tesla since 2010 and was also a business analyst at McKinsey & Co.

Shares of Tesla fell over 4% on the news that one of the company’s longest serving executives would be leaving.

Recently Tesla also said in a letter that “Model 3’s production rate progressively improved” last quarter, “with December 2018 being our highest volume month ever.”

Tesla expects to be producing about 7,000 vehicles per week at its factory in Fremont, California, by the end of the year.

“It is critical that we continue this trend so that we can keep increasing the affordability of Model 3 while retaining a sustainable level of profitability,” the company said.

Disclaimer: We have no position in Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA) and have not been compensated for this article.