Tesla, the hottest stock on the market for over a year, has plunged into bear market territory.
Shares of Tesla fell 6% Tuesday after closing down 8.5% on Monday, wiping out its earnings for the year. The stock closed at a record just above $ 883 on January 26 and has since declined. It fell to $ 619 on Tuesday, marking the first time Tesla shares have fallen below $ 700 since Dec. 31.
The sharp drop has pushed Tesla shares below their level when the company entered the S&P 500 on December 21. It also landed its CEO, Elon Musk, at number two on the list of the richest people on the planet, behind Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. The two have been swapping positions repeatedly this year.
Tesla shares are selling for several reasons:
Bitcoin
Tesla announces that it will accept bitcoins as payment 2:34Tesla announced earlier this month that it had invested $ 1.5 billion in bitcoin. That helped fuel the recent rally for bitcoin, and by some estimates Tesla made a quick $ 1 billion profit. This is more than you have ever made from car sales in a single year.
However, on Saturday, in response to a criticism of Tesla’s bitcoin investment, Musk tweeted that the prices of both bitcoin and another cryptocurrency called Ether “seem high.” That helped the price of bitcoin fall 9.3% in Monday’s trading, which may have helped drag Tesla shares lower.
“In our opinion, Bitcoin is the smart move at the right time for Tesla, but on the downside it is playing with fire and risk and volatility are adding to the Tesla story,” said Daniel Ives, technology analyst at Wedbush Securities, who is betting higher on Tesla shares.
Model Y Price
Last Thursday, Tesla slashed the price of the cheapest version of its Model Y and its best-selling Model 3 by $ 2,000 each. That raised the price of the “standard range” Model Y, which can travel more than 390 km on a charge, to $ 38,490, and the standard range Model 3 to $ 34,590.
But over the weekend, the cheaper “standard range” version of the Model Y disappeared from Tesla’s sales site. Only the more expensive long-range and performance versions of the SUV were left. Tesla did not explain his decision.
“We see the following plausible reasons: either the combination leaned too much towards the cheaper variant and was therefore going to kill its margins, or most likely there simply wasn’t much demand for the lower variant,” Gordon Johnson said. from GLJ Research, who bets down on Tesla shares. He said recent price cuts and other cuts show that Tesla vehicles are not in the demand that their fans claim.
“Tesla cannot keep its current factories running at capacity without … price cuts,” Johnson said in a note Monday.
Greater competition
Consolidated automakers have recently set ambitious targets for their own EV sales.
General Motors unveiled a truck-like version of its Chevrolet Bolt a week ago, priced well below the Model Y, and announced that it intends to sell only zero-emissions cars after 2035. Ford set an even more ambitious goal for its European sales: It said all the car models it sells there will be electric vehicles by 2030.
This is Chevrolet’s new Bolt EUV 1:01Apple is also considering partnering with an automaker to get into this business, according to various reports.
These efforts make some Tesla investors nervous, Ives said, though he believes there will be enough of a shift toward electric vehicles for there to be multiple winners among global manufacturers.
Investors got ahead
Tesla shares peaked a day before a disappointing earnings report on January 27, which fell short of Wall Street analysts’ forecasts.
The results showed that the money Tesla made from selling regulatory credits to other automakers exceeded its overall net income. Critics, like Johnson, said it is proof that Tesla is unable to make money from building and selling cars (although, by other profit measures, Tesla is profitable).
During the January 27 results conference call, Musk also spoke about the shortage of batteries needed to power electric vehicles. He said that even with Tesla’s internal supply of batteries and its planned battery production expansion, the company is struggling to find the batteries it wants to build more vehicles.
“The fundamental limit for electric vehicles at the moment, in general, is the total availability of (battery) cells,” he said. For example, Musk said that Tesla would have already started producing an articulated truck if it had the batteries available to do so.
Tesla shares continue on their upward path
Tesla shares rose 743%, a market record, in 2020 as investors embraced the idea that the future of the auto industry would be electric. Tesla is still by far the most valuable carmaker in the world. It has a market value far greater than that of the eight largest automakers combined.
Even with the recent fall. Shares of Tesla are up about 1,300% since October 2019, when it reported a third-quarter profit that surprised investors, sending the shares skyrocketing.
Some investors believe that Tesla shares soared too high. However, many analysts believe that Tesla will rebound. Ives has a 12-month price target of $ 950.
Still, he has a caveat: “It’s ‘time to buckle up’ again for Tesla stocks, as more volatility is on the horizon,” Ives said.