Tesla is going through a mini-crisis and CEO Elon Musk seems detached. That isn’t great news for nervous investors.
Questioning whether Tesla CEO Elon Musk is as focused on the electric vehicle maker as he should be is valid.
It’s easy to beat up on the iconoclastic CEO while his company’s stock is down and Wall Street analysts are cutting estimates and downgrading shares. Still, as growth slows and market share losses accelerate, asking if Musk is as focused on Tesla as he should be is a valid question.
”While we were anticipating a bad 1Q [first quarter], this was an unmitigated disaster,” wrote Wedbush analyst Dan Ives. Tesla delivered just 387,000 units in the first quarter, down almost 9% year over year, missing the lowest Wall Street estimates by some 20,000 vehicles. The result “could be [a] turning point in [the Tesla] story if Musk does not reverse [the] trend.”
Ives is a Tesla fan. He has a $300 price target for the stock and rates it a Buy.
Musk didn’t seem all that concerned by the weak results. He spent the day after the release tweeting about anything except Tesla. Barron’s looked at Musk’s tweets, reposts, and replies the day following Tesla’s first-quarter delivery report on Tuesday. We counted 52 tweets. Politics, immigration, and wokeness dominate the list. X-related tweets were represented. Even tweets about Disney topped tweets about Tesla.
Tesla didn’t respond to a request for comment about Barron’s analysis.
Tesla felt like an afterthought with two tweets. One was a response to a picture including a Cybertruck from Kim Kardashian. The other was a shot at Ross Gerber, CEO of Gerber Kawasaki Wealth and Investment Management and a Tesla shareholder.
“He’s such an idiot that he can’t even tell he’s an idiot,” Musk tweeted. “ BYD sales dropped by 42% from last quarter. This was a tough quarter for everyone.”
Gerber was unhappy with the delivery report but said he still supports Tesla. “I backed Elon and Tesla when he needed money,” he said. “I still back Tesla.”
Gerber also offered a solution for Tesla’s recent growth problem when asked about deliveries on Tuesday. “Get Elon off Twitter,” he said.
At least the Gerber tweet included a review of the delivery report. Musk’s response is flawed though. He’s correct about the sequential decline at BYD, but all electric vehicle sales grew 13% year over year. The first quarter is seasonally weak in China partly because of the Lunar New Year holiday.
Tesla sales dropped 20% sequentially and about 9% year over year. Tesla sells more EVs globally than BYD ,so the Chinese market seasonality is less of an impact.
What’s more, Tesla’s U.S. sales grew about 4% year over year, according to industry data reviewed by Freedom Capital Markets analyst Mike Ward. Overall, U.S. EV sales grew about 8%. Tesla lost market share.
Whatever Musk thinks, no one defended the Telsa number. “Shockingly disappointing,” “unmitigated disaster,” “record” miss, “weak,” and “surprising” were terms analysts chose to describe the quarter in reports following earnings.
To be sure, a one-day tweet survey doesn’t prove that Musk is distracted. The findings aren’t comforting though.
Analysts and investors will have the chance to hear from Musk when the company reports first-quarter earnings on April 23.
Tesla stock dropped almost 5% on Tuesday after deliveries. Coming into Thursday trading, shares were down about 32% year to date.
Shares rose 1.6% on Thursday at $171.11. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite dropped 1.2% and 1.4%, respectively.
Thursday’s gain leaves shares about 20 cents below their level just before the deliveries were reported.