Musk Sell-off Adds To Tesla Value Drop

Musk Sell-off Adds To Tesla Value Drop

Since Elon Musk first announced he would buy Twitter in April, shares in his electric vehicle company Tesla have dipped by almost 50%. Their value had dropped steadily since the world’s richest man expressed an interest in the social media giant.

However, Tesla had started to recover and stock was up at the start of Friday 4th November by almost 4%, with shares trading at $223.80, before the chaos of mass redundancies at Twitter apparently sent it plummeting again. The Tesla stock finished the week on a miserable note.

That trend has been further amplified by news that Elon Muck himself has ditched $4bn worth of Tesla stock.

Net Worth Down

Musk’s net worth was reported to have dropped by around $9 billion to $203 billion after the Twitter deal and by a total of 25% since the beginning of 2022. Although the market has dented his wealth, he still remains the richest man in the world.

Analysts believe the November jobs report, combined with the Twitter chaos, caused the Tesla stock to fall more than 5% in one day. There was no other obvious reason for the dip, aside from the mass redundancies of Twitter staff that Musk imposed on 4th November.

Negative Impact

The hashtag “TwitterLayoffs” has been trending across social media, with many of the tweets being distinctly unfriendly towards Musk. The wave of public feeling against the layoffs appears to have spearheaded the negative impact on Tesla, his largest publicly-traded company.

Laying off staff was deemed necessary to save the under-performing social media franchise, but the bad PR has rolled over into Tesla as well, with market perception becoming a reality for Musk. The multi-billionaire tweeted on Friday about a “massive drop” in ad revenue.

The general chaos is unnerving investors and it appears they don’t want to think about the company CEO being distracted by running Twitter.

New Responsibilities

Speaking at the 29th annual Baron Investment Conference, Musk revealed juggling his new responsibilities had caused his workload to go up from around 78 hours a week to “probably 120“.

He is now the CEO and sole director of Twitter following the $44 billion deal. He has jokingly called himself the “Chief Twit”, rather than his more formal title.

Sources:

CNBC

Barrons

Time