The luxury electric car company Tesla fell close to 5% this Tuesday on Wall Street and seems headed to register its worst year on the stock market amid criticism for the fixation of its main executive, Elon Musk, with the social network Twitter, which recently purchased.
Tesla has slashed its value by around 55% since the start of this year, but the trigger for that loss appears to have been the closing of the $44 billion purchase of Twitter last October, as in just the last three months has cut 46%, according to market data.
To finance the operation, Musk has used investors and loans but also his personal assets, since he sold part of his Tesla shares in several batches between April and November for a value of about 19,000 million dollars, which contributed to the decline in the quote.
Some prominent investors in the automotive company have raised their voices to express their discontent with Musk’s involvement with Twitter, such as businessman Gary Black, who through his account on the social network considered that Tesla “has been negatively affected by Twitter drama”.
“Let’s be clear: as long-term investors we are not going to sell Tesla at a depressed price of $170/share against an estimated valuation of $550/share,” he added today, expressing his expectation that Musk appoints a director to Twitter and “resume your duties as a full-time executive at Tesla.”
Other investors are turning to the birdie platform to label Musk and members of the Tesla board of directors and launch criticism, such as Ross Gerber, who claimed that “an acting CEO” to stop the stock market decline, or Eva McMillan, who asked “a plan for the good” of employees and investors.
As a result of the loss of capitalization of Tesla, which represents a large part of Musk’s assets, the businessman has ceased to lead the list of the richest people in the world prepared by Forbes and Bloomberg, ceding the throne to the French luxury magnate Bernard Arnault, the head of the LVMH conglomerate.
Musk has about 14% of the shares of Tesla -valued today at about 530,000 million- but that is not his only source of wealth, since he owns more than 40% of the aerospace company SpaceX, which is not listed but would be valued at about 140,000 million, as reported by Bloomberg on Tuesday.