Tesla share: price drop continues, Elon Musk sells because of Twitter deal

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Tesla:

The signs on the stock exchange are currently red.

Tesla boss Elon Musk is currently selling a lot of Tesla shares himself

Photo: Alex Plavevski/EPA

From stock market star to dropout paper: The price drop in Tesla shares continued on Friday.

At just over $150, Tesla shares fell to a two-year low.

In 2022 alone, they have already lost 57 percent in value.

Since the record high of just over a year, the minus has added up to 63 percent: Two thirds of Tesla's market capitalization have disappeared within 13 months.

Two-thirds of the stock market value gone since the record high

The electric car maker's previously hyped stock has been suffering from concerns about demand and profitability for a while.

In addition, CEO

(51) currently seems distracted by his new role as owner and CEO of the Twitter course news service.

And since Musk needs money to fund the Twitter acquisition, Musk continues to sell Tesla shares heavily.

Musk also sold nearly 22 million Tesla shares between Dec. 12 and 14 for a total of nearly $3.6 billion.

It was the fourth time this year that Musk had to part with billions in Tesla shares to finance the controversial Twitter purchase.

With this, Musk continues to antagonize the investors in the US electric car manufacturer.

Since the $44 billion takeover of the short message service Twitter, the entrepreneur has repeatedly thrown shares on the market, presumably to secure the financing of the deal with a large part of the proceeds.

Despite the price drop, it is still worth more than BMW, Mercedes and VW together

At the beginning of 2022, Tesla was still worth around $850 billion.

Despite the price losses, Tesla, with a market capitalization of around 450 billion euros, is still worth more on the stock exchange than its German competitors BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen combined.

They make it less than half in Summer.

"The Twitter nightmare continues"

"The Twitter nightmare continues," commented Wedbush analyst

, 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."

Falling stock valuations have also knocked Musk off his status as the world's richest person, with his net worth now down to $154 billion, according to Forbes.

The richest person is currently the French luxury entrepreneur and LVMH boss

(73).

Musk will remain a major Tesla shareholder after the sale.

He now owns 13.4 percent of the shares.

It could be that he is currently parting with other shares.

In the meantime, observers are no longer expecting any major package sales, since the window for possible sales is closing again this Friday.

Because of the publication of the quarterly figures in January, the Tesla boss will not be allowed to sell any more shares for the time being.

lhy with Reuters