Quick Bite: Tesla: why one Kiwi fund moved on from Elon

Tesla helped lead the charge on decarbonisation—but Pathfinder no longer holds it in their portfolio as its ESG credentials weren't meeting the company's threshold.

CEO John Berry shares why they backed the mission, and what led them to change course

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to a share these podcast as an ethical
fund manager, to expect that your investors aren't just looking
for return, They want you to vocalize that and the
kind of votes that you make or the kind of
communications you have with the company.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
And the way we talk to companies, the way we invest.
And that's a challenge from the perspective of there is
no perfect company. So every company you invest in has
both got attributes and bad attributes, and you need to
make trade offs between the two. And I'll give you
an example of Tesla. So Tesla we invested in years
ago because we loved the mission of Elon Musk to

(00:37):
essentially drive decarbonization not just the car you have in
the garage, but of transport. And so he was leading
in the transport in the decombanization, electrification space.

Speaker 1 (00:46):
And apouting batteries in just about every driveway. Right, So
that's a whole other thing that's happening too.

Speaker 2 (00:51):
Yeah, so there's a powerful drive. But you look at
the company from an ESG perspective, like governance, pretty bad governance, right,
person who's who's controlling the show and is always going
to lead trouble in large companies environmental and social issues
around supply chain, for example, and where you get the
rear earth and minerals from. We sort of weighed that

(01:14):
the mission, you know, outweighed the the ESG harms. But
more recently we've said, actually, other car companies are now
catching up to Tessa and have followed that leadership. We
don't need to invest in the company with the concerns
we have around so where she sold it.

Speaker 1 (01:30):
Earlier this year, you have sold all your testa yeah, wow, yeah,
what are you buying?

Speaker 2 (01:36):
What are we buying? Oh, look, we've got you know,
there's there's plenty of tech companies, you know mag seven,
There's fantastic opportunities there. But Tesla is no longer in
the portfolio. Wow.

Speaker 1 (01:48):
Big moment.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
Investing involves the risk you might lose the money you
start with. We recommend talking to a licensed financial advisor.
We also recommend reading product disclosure documents before deciding to invest.