Marking global sales and increasingly open political activities of Elon Musk combine to rock Tesla’s value.
The shares in the company once billions of dollars saw their worst day in five years this week. To date, Tesla shares have plunged 36%, although it has still increased by 54% in the last 12 months.
For Musk, Tesla’s actions remain their main source of paper wealth, although it has also turned its participation in Spacex into a personal loan tool. But were the profits of the sale of Tesla shares that helped Musk complete its acquisition of Twitter, now known as X.
Musk’s richness also allowed him to help Donald Trump address in a second presidential mandate. Although Musk’s net assets has decreased as a result of the recent decreases in Tesla shared price, the data suggests that it is not in danger of losing their title as the richest person in the world.
Musk has said in X that he is not worried about the recent fall of Tesla in the value. Even so, the evidence suggests that the company is entering a period of transition.
A Tesla spokesman did not respond to a request for comments.
Musk’s richness has driven him to a global presence that lacks precedents, and has polarized world opinion on the technological entrepreneur in the process. Any weakening of its financial position, therefore, could undermine its influence on political and technological spaces, where it now requires huge attention. Thanking the Bank of America, the European sales of Tesla collapsed by approximately 50% in January compared to the same month the previous year.
Some say that this is attributable to a growing disgust for Musk, which has begun to venture into the continent policy following its successful support for Trump’s candidacy last year.
Others point out that the European market of Tesla faces a greater competition of the Chinese manufacturer of BYD electric vehicles, which has telegraphed ambitious expansion plans in the continent.
A more decisive blow to Tesla’s short -term fortunes may be emanating from China. There, Tesla shipments fell 49% in February since an earlier year, only 30,688 vehicles, according to official data cited by Bloomberg News. That is the lowest monthly figure registered since July 2022, in the middle of the agony of COVID-19, when he sent only 28,217 electric vehicles, Bloomberg said.
Tesla now faces an intense competition from other Chinese EV manufacturers, including byd.
However, even there, a Chinese official also warned about the impact of Musk’s high profile policy.
“As a successful entrepreneur, one should adopt 100% of the market: treat everyone and all will be pleasant in return,” said China’s passenger car association, in an informative session on Monday, Bloomberg reported. “But if you look at it in terms of voting, half of the voters will be friendly to you and half of them will not be.”
“This is the inevitable risk that has come after obtaining his personal glory,” said the secretary, Cui Dongshu, on Monday, referring to Musk.
On Friday, Reuters reported that Tesla planned to sell a model and that it cost at least 20% less to produce to defend their participation in China.
And in the US, the January sales of Tesla fell approximately 11%, according to data from the Global S&P analysis group, an atypical at a time when EV sales for all other brands are higher in the United States.
Although for a long time he has used multiple proverbial hats, Musk’s role in the White House as a nominal head of the Government’s efficiency department may be the most consistent. And having influence with the Trump administration could be critical for Tesla’s fortune. This week, Trump promised that he would buy a Tesla in a striking presentation at the White House grass, apparently consolidating the Trump-Musk alliance.
In X, the social media platform that it has, Musk’s frantic publication is increasingly focused on the policy and cultural wars of the United States, with an occasional wink to Spacex launches.
His apparently not diminished role in the Trump administration, was seen leaving the White House last weekend along with the Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, has caused boycott in Europe, as well as protests and even acts of vandalism against car owners in the United States.
“When people’s cars are in danger of being extinguished or burned, even people who support Musk or are indifferent to Musk, they might think twice before buying a tesla,” said Ben Kallo, Baird analyst, on Monday to “Squawk on the street” of CNBC.
In a note for customers this week degrading their delivery estimate, JPMorgan analysts said that the damage to the Tesla brand has been serious.
“We struggled to think about something analogous in the history of the automotive industry, in which a brand has lost both such rapid value,” they wrote.
Tesla itself warns about the consequences of retaliation measures taken by the countries led by Trump’s tariffs, saying in a letter to the United States commercial representative this week that the company can be “exposed to disproportionate impacts when other countries respond to the commercial actions of the United States.”
Already, the Canadian province of British Columbia has announced that the subsidies for Tesla products were finishing.
In spite of everything, oxygen musk has assumed its political activities, concerns about Tesla’s products are equally keeping investors and analysts at night.
Musk has “negligence[ed] The rest of Tesla’s automotive business, as I thought that at the end of each year during the last 6 years, Tesla could turn a switch and make all its vehicles autonomous, automatically increasing their value and making them infinitely more competitive than other vehicles, “Fred Lambert, who covers the company for the Electrek electric vehicles blog, in a recent publication.
Meanwhile, Musk decided to kill the cheapest Tesla model of $ 25,000 while doing everything in Cybertruck, whose sales have not yet taken off, said Lambert.
“Tesla’s main business continues to sell cars and batteries,” he wrote. “There is no doubt that the business of selling cars is not going well for Tesla at this time, and under Musk, there is no clear path to improvement.”
On the contrary, many analysts continue to have a much longer vision of Tesla’s perspectives. In his most recent note to customers about the company, Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas, one of Tesla’s most observed observers, summarized the long -term perspective that, according to him, continues to justify the company’s assessment.
“The softest automatic deliveries in Tesla are emblematic of a company in the transition of an automotive ‘pure game to a highly diversified work about AI and robotics,” he wrote in a note on March 2.
While that was before the intensification of the sale of more recent sales, Jonas said he was already discounting the market turns.
“While the trip can be volatile and non -linear, we believe that 2025 will be a year in which investors will continue to appreciate and value these existing and nascent industries of incorporated where we believe that Tesla has established a material competitive advantage,” he wrote.
