There is a new blog entry entitled, “A life worth living.”
Gilead
Fig. 1. “Elon Musk shared a video of his entrance on his Twitter account.” Photograph attributed to Elon Musk, October 26, 2022, via the New York Post,[1] fair use.
There is, after all, still a long ways to fall, but Elon Musk has been selling Tesla stock and, some stockholders allege, neglecting management of Tesla supposedly to keep Twitter afloat.[2] The latest slippage in Tesla stock value is not obviously about Twitter,[3] but it’s difficult to clearly separate Musk’s personal brand, as Twitter’s full-throttle nosedive to doom continues,[4] from Tesla’s corporate brand, and now Twitter’s.
A major factor in the latest slippage is, we are told, a drop in demand for Tesla vehicles.[5] The more qualitative-than-quantitative question here is, how much of that drop is due to Musk’s declining popularity?
Brian Swint, writing in a Barron’s newsletter, notes that “Tesla is still trading at 19 times forward earnings” and thus “remains relatively expensive.” Analysts apparently still don’t generally rate it a “sell.” Tesla stock “may have soared like a SpaceX rocket, but the company still hasn’t returned all the way to Earth,” Swint writes, I think siding with those analysts.[6] I think I may be interpreting that in a different way than Swint intends it: Confidence is a fickle thing. When it’s the only thing between you and that fall to earth, you’d better hope you have a parachute.
Karishma Vanjani and Al Root, “Tesla Drops Out of the 10 Biggest U.S. Public Companies,” Barron’s, December 27, 2022, https://www.barrons.com/articles/tesla-stock-price-market-cap-tsla-51672162042
- [1]Thomas Barrabi, “Elon Musk barges into Twitter HQ as deal nears: ‘Let that sink in,’” New York Post, October 26, 2022, https://nypost.com/2022/10/26/elon-musk-barges-into-twitter-headquarters-as-deal-nears/↩
- [2]Kevin T. Dugan, “Is Elon Musk Setting Himself Up to Lose Tesla?” New York, December 16, 2022, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/12/why-elon-musks-twitter-affair-could-cots-him-tesla.html; Rebecca Elliott, “Elon Musk Sold More Than $3.5 Billion Worth of Tesla Shares,” Wall Street Journal, December 14, 2022, https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musk-sold-more-than-3-5-billion-worth-of-tesla-shares-11671071099; Dana Hull and Bloomberg, “Elon Musk just unloaded $3.6 billion in Tesla stock, his 4th huge sale this year,” Fortune, December 15, 2022, https://fortune.com/2022/12/15/elon-musk-unloaded-billion-tesla-stock-fourth-huge-sale-this-year/; Stephen Wilmot, “Half-Price Tesla Stock Is Still No Bargain,” Wall Street Journal, December 12, 2022, https://www.wsj.com/articles/half-price-tesla-stock-is-still-no-bargain-11670851513↩
- [3]Karishma Vanjani and Al Root, “Tesla Drops Out of the 10 Biggest U.S. Public Companies,” Barron’s, December 27, 2022, https://www.barrons.com/articles/tesla-stock-price-market-cap-tsla-51672162042↩
- [4]David Benfell, “Elon Musk’s Achilles’ heel,” Not Housebroken, December 21, 2022, https://disunitedstates.org/2022/07/10/elon-musks-achilles-heel/↩
- [5]Karishma Vanjani and Al Root, “Tesla Drops Out of the 10 Biggest U.S. Public Companies,” Barron’s, December 27, 2022, https://www.barrons.com/articles/tesla-stock-price-market-cap-tsla-51672162042↩
- [6]Brian Swint in Barron’s, “Tesla Falls to Two-Year Low. Why It May Not Have Bottomed Out,” December 28, 2022, https://www.barrons.com/articles/what-to-know-today-51672216064↩