Tesla stock drops after Elon Musk says of DOGE: “It’s costing me a lot to be in this job”
Tesla has a lot of things going against it, including a distracted Elon Musk.
At a town hall yesterday in Wisconsin, Tesla CEO and head of the Department of Government Efficiency Elon Musk rallied support for a conservative state Supreme Court judge. He also noted the toll the latter role has taken on his electric car company, whose stock is down about 6% premarket.
“It’s costing me a lot to be in this job,” Musk told the crowd regarding his extragovernmental position, where he’s slashing federal jobs that’s made him and his company broadly unpopular. “My Tesla stock and the stock of everyone who holds Tesla stock went roughly in half.” Back in December, the stock was trading at nearly $480; it’s currently down to about $248.
Musk indeed has a lot to lose. Every time Tesla shares go down $2.43, he loses another billion dollars. (That means he’s lost about $6 billion on paper this morning.)
Many other issues, from full self-driving problems to increased competition, are weighing on the stock as well. Most recently:
Over the weekend, protesters picketed at hundreds of Tesla locations around the country as part of the “Tesla Takedown” campaign.
Analysts keep lowering estimates for Tesla deliveries, blaming, among other headwinds, slowing demand and backlash against Musk’s political forays. Deutsche Bank and Stifel were the latest to lower their estimates for Tesla’s first-quarter deliveries, which will be released this week. A Tesla-compiled list of analyst estimates predicts 377,000 deliveries will be announced, representing a decline from last year’s 387,000 first-quarter deliveries, rather than the “return to growth” Tesla promised.
President Trump’s tariffs are expected to negatively affect Tesla, too. CEO Elon Musk, Tesla leadership, and the biggest Tesla bull out there, Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives, have all said tariffs will hurt the EV company.
In the premarket, Tesla shares were trading at $248.23 as of 9:07 a.m. ET, lower than they were on Election Day.
