Tesla’s share price has not fallen because Elon Musk is asleep at the wheel
After Tuesday’s 10% drop and then 3.3% recovery, Tesla shares are trading at around 68% off their January third annual high; in December alone, their price fell by 42%: its worst month, quarter and year since the company went public in July 2010. If we simply consider the drop from the $1.2 trillion valuation in January to the $435 billion it is now worth, the difference is the valuation of the entire rest of the traditional automotive sector.
What does Tesla’s huge loss in value reflect? First, of course, the decision of its most visible figure, Elon Musk, to sell significant amounts of its shares in order to obtain sufficient liquidity to finance the acquisition of Twitter for $43 billion. The timeline leaves no room for doubt: since he asked in November 2021 in a Twitter poll whether he should divest 10% of his Tesla shares, the sequence has been $5 billion in that same month, $687 million more a few days later, $1 billion more in December 2021, $8.5 billion in April 2022, $6.88 billion more in August, $4 billion more in November, and $3.6 billion more on December 15. In total, more than $40 billion dollars in shares, which is a significant reduction in the value of the company’s shares.
Along the way, he has also exercised some of the options he had and has talked about the possibility…
