Tesla CEO Elon Musk is telling the company’s employees to stay calm after the share price plunged nearly 70 percent this year.
Don’t worry too much about the craziness of the stock market. When we can show continued excellent efforts, the market will recognize it,” Musk writes in an email to employees seen by Reuters.
He’s asking employees to deliver more cars before the end of the current quarter after Tesla offered discounts on auto sales in the US and China.
– Go ahead for the next few days and volunteer to help, if possible. It will make a real difference, Musk writes.
Tesla shares recovered on Wednesday after dropping 11 percent the previous day.
Musk encourages employees to search.
– I have great faith that in the long run Tesla will become the most valuable company in the world, he wrote in the e-mail.
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Historical decline
The electric vehicle maker is just days away from what appears to be the company’s worst month, quarter and year on the stock market.
Tesla shares are up nearly 70 percent since the new year. For the quarter, the stock is down about 59 percent before the last three trading days, while the stock is down about 44 percent so far in December.
Since its IPO in 2010, Tesla’s share has only fallen a year earlier, in 2016, when the drop was 11 percent.
The electric car maker was valued at about $1.112 billion at the end of 2021. After Wednesday’s trading, the market capitalization was $353 billion.
This means that more than $750 billion in paper value has evaporated from Tesla so far this year.
Musk descends from the throne
Overall, 2022 has been a tough year for stock markets, with concerns such as sharp price growth and interest rate hikes. This has particularly affected technology stocks such as Tesla.
At the same time, the electric car maker faced, among other things, challenges at its Shanghai plant, as 2022 was marked by strict lockdowns and restrictions against Corona.
In addition, Elon Musk has been accused of spending too much time on Twitter and too little on Tesla. Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion earlier this year, and took over as CEO of that company, too.
Elon Musk is the CEO of Tesla and the company’s largest shareholder. A large portion of his wealth comes in the form of Tesla shares.
Tesla’s collapse contributed significantly to Musk’s fortune dropping by more than half this year.
Bloomberg now counts his wealth at $132 billion, down $138 billion this year. No one else in the world has seen his wealth erode to a greater extent than Musk in the past year.
Musk was also dethroned as the richest man in the world. France’s Bernard Arnault took first place on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index earlier this year.
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