One of Tesla’s biggest bulls is changing his tune on Elon Musk

Last week, known Tesla bull Dan Ives added Tesla to Wedbush Securities’ “Best Ideas List,” meaning he thought the stock offers significant growth potential. Now he’s saying investors’ patience is wearing thin and is calling on CEO Elon Musk to “step up” and return to the office.

Last week:

“...we expect Musk will better balance his time between DOGE and Tesla/SpaceX over the course of 2025 and some of these distraction issues will fade. We continue to believe the best thing that ever happened to Musk and Tesla was Trump in the White House as this will create a deregulatory environment with a federal autonomous roadmap central to the Tesla golden strategic vision.”

Today:

“In a nutshell the word ‘balance" has been missing with Elon Musk and his ability to run Tesla as CEO... while instead focusing all of his energy and time driving his DOGE initiative within the Trump Administration... There has been little to no sign of Musk at any Tesla factory or manufacturing facility the last two months and perception has become reality for Tesla shares.”

What changed? Well, the stock has gone down quite a bit since the first missive was sent last Thursday, when the stock closed at $263.45. Yesterday, before the latest note, Tesla closed about 16% lower, at $222.15. Though many of Tesla’s headwinds — declining sales, lowered analyst estimates, growing competition, shrinking popularity, a rash of protests, and tariffs on Mexico and Canada — were present last week, they’ve gotten harder to ignore.

For what it’s worth, Ives maintains the firm’s outperform rating and $550 price target.