From the stock market star to the drop-out paper: the fall in the share price of Tesla accelerated just before Christmas. Tesla shares fell 8 percent to $138 on Tuesday in the United States to a two-year low. In 2022 alone, they have already lost more than 60 percent in value: At the beginning of January 2022, Tesla shares were still quoted at 400 US dollars. Since the record high a good year ago, the minus has added up to 65 percent: Two thirds of Tesla’s market capitalization have disappeared within 13 months.
The drop in the price of the former darling on the stock exchange cannot only be explained by the general price drop in technology stocks on the Nasdaq. Tech heavyweights like Amazon and Nvidia have also crashed since the beginning of the year, but not to the same extent as Tesla. At Tesla there are three main factors: The towering valuation, Teslas Twitter-Trauma as well as the realization that the former tech messiah Elon Musk becomes more and more unpredictable. The fact that Musk died after a vote on Twitter doesn’t change that announced his imminent departure as Twitter CEO.
The previously hyped stock of the US electric car maker has also been suffering from demand concerns and difficulties in the US for a while China. Added to this is the fact that corporate leaders Elon Musk (51) through his new role as owner and CEO of the course news service Twitter seems distracted for months. Even the prospect that Musk will soon end his dual role as head of Tesla and Twitter and vacate his post at Twitter has so far not been able to slow down the price drop in Tesla shares. On the contrary.
Many investors, including the Billionaire Musk fanboy Leo Koguan Musk resents that since the takeover of the Twitter restructuring case, he has apparently only marginally cared for the profit machine Tesla, the much more valuable company. Musk is “Missing in Action” (MIA) for Tesla investors Koguan complained.
In other words: Twitter steals valuable time from the Tesla boss – and costs him a lot of money on top of that.
Since Musk needs money to finance the Twitter takeover, he has recently continued to sell Tesla shares, which is further depressing the price. Most recently, between December 12 and December 14, Musk sold almost 22 million Tesla shares for a total of almost $3.6 billion. It was the fourth time this year that he had divested himself of billions in Tesla shares, believed to be instrumental in financing the controversial $44 billion Twitter purchase. With this, Musk continues to antagonize the investors in the US electric car manufacturer.
“The Twitter nightmare continues,” commented Wedbush analyst Dan Ives, who recently criticized Musk for increasingly concentrating his management capacities on Twitter instead of Tesla. Musk is now a villain in the eyes of Tesla investors, Ives said. In his opinion, Tesla’s fundamentals remain healthy, but Musk’s behavior on Twitter hurts the brand. “Musk’s self-inflicted Twitter-related woes continue to weigh on the Tesla story and growing investor frustration.”
Despite the price drop, it is still worth more than BMW, Mercedes and VW together
The losses in value in the portfolios of investors are enormous. At the beginning of 2022, Tesla was still worth around $850 billion. Now it’s around $440 billion. However, Tesla is still worth more on the stock exchange than its German competitors bmw, Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen together. They make it less than half in Summer.
Falling stock valuations have also ousted Musk from his status as the richest person in the world, with his net worth currently falling to $154 billion, according to Forbes. The richest person is currently the French luxury entrepreneur
and LVMH-Boss Bernard Arnault (73).
Musk will remain a major Tesla shareholder after the sale. He now owns 13.4 percent of the shares. After all, observers do not expect any further package sales in the short term, since the window for possible sales closed again on Friday. Because of the publication of the quarterly figures in January, the Tesla boss is not allowed to sell any more shares for the time being.