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By Supantha Mukherjee
(Reuters) - Tesla Inc <TSLA.O> chief Elon Musk's refusal to answer "boring" Wall Street questions about finances sent the electric vehicle maker's shares down as much as 7 percent on Thursday, jarring investors and raising concerns about its ability to raise money in the future.
Tesla's bonds followed the shares lower and, with at least three brokerages cutting price targets for the stock, several wondered what it would now cost the company to raise more funds this year if need be.
In a conference call on Wednesday, Musk refused to answer questions from analysts on Tesla's capital requirements, saying "boring questions are not cool."
Instead, he took over a dozen consecutive questions from YouTube investment channel HyperChange TV, which had previously recommended buying Tesla shares.
Cowen analyst Jeffrey Osborne dubbed the call, in which Musk talked of "barnacles, flufferbots, and bonehead bears", surreal.
Morgan Stanley's Adam Jonas said it was the most unusual he had heard in 20 years in the business, noting that "the analysts on the call represent the providers of capital that Tesla has throughout its history depended upon."
Some saw the call in even more stark terms.
Eric Schiffer, head of the Patriarch Organization, a Los Angeles-based private equity firm, called it "the single greatest CEO meltdown in American car history."
"Elon Musk's war on day traders and analysts from big banks is like him being on the earnings call with a suicide vest on and pulling the cord. It's horribly incompetent with investors and results in the stock getting hit by roaring missiles," Schiffer said, adding that he did not own Tesla shares "for reasons like this."
Of 27 brokerages covering the stock, nine now have a "buy" or higher rating, 10 "hold" and eight have "sell" or lower.
The company's shares closed down 5.5 percent at $284.45 in New York. They have lost more than a quarter of their value since touching a high of $389.61 in September, hurt by reports of bottlenecks around production of the Model 3 sedan, seen as crucial to Tesla's profitability.
Musk has won legions of vocal fans for his soaring vision and bold promises, from making electric vehicles mainstream to sending rockets into space as the CEO of SpaceX.
But the entrepreneur has also exhibited erratic behaviour in recent months, from late-night tweets and jokes about bankruptcy to a public spat with regulators investigating a fatality involving a Tesla.