Elon Musk und Ross Gerber.
Leon Neal/Getty Images and Emma McIntyre/Getty Images
Tesla’s flagging stock price could recover if CEO Elon Musk changes his behavior or is replaced, veteran investor Ross Gerber told Yahoo Finance.
Musk’s behavior on X made him an “advertising devil,” said Gerber.
His comments follow a recent downgrade of Tesla shares by Wells Fargo, which cut its price target to $125 per share.
This is a machine translation of an article from our US colleagues at Business Insider. It was automatically translated and checked by a real editor.
To stop the steep decline in Tesla shares, CEO Elon Musk must either change his behavior or be replaced, said longtime investor Ross Gerber „Yahoo Finance“.
“That could change very quickly if Tesla either gets a real CEO who will actually help the company or if Elon changes his tone and actually goes back to work at Tesla and promotes the brand in a positive way,” he said.
The electric car manufacturer’s shares have fallen by more than 36 percent since the beginning of the year. The plunge was triggered by disappointing earnings, a lackluster product lineup and general market headwinds.
On Monday, Wells Fargo lowered the company’s price target to $125 per share, representing a 23 percent decline from current levels. The bank called Tesla a “non-growth company” and expects earnings per share this year to come in 32 percent below estimates.
For investors like Gerber, frustration with Musk’s leadership and public behavior is reaching its peak. This has become a point of contention since the CEO’s purchase of X, formerly Twitter.
While Musk’s popular tweets about Tesla have effectively saved the company marketing costs in the past, his behavior on the social media platform has increasingly become a source of controversy that is damaging the automaker, as Gerber has often pointed out.
In fact, Musk’s interaction with an anti-Semitic post last November led Gerber to announce that he would be replacing his Tesla Model Y with a Rivian, Tesla’s competitor. That’s a strong comment from an investor who once sought a seat on the company’s board.
Read too
Elon Musk visits the Tesla factory in Brandenburg: He wants to produce this electric truck in Germany
“I think investors have had enough, and we’re now seeing the deception in this business model, where the king of promoting the brand is now basically the devil of promoting the brand,” he told Yahoo on Thursday.
Even more daunting are Musk’s plans to develop artificial intelligence initiatives independently of Tesla, denying the company the opportunity to expand its dominance in the technology space.
Meanwhile, Tesla enthusiast Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities believes investors’ bearishness is overblown and believes the electric car maker’s shares could rise 77 percent within twelve months.
To achieve this, Ives emphasized that Musk’s compensation package should be improved while his control over the shares should be increased.
Read the original article Business Insider.
Read too
The secret behind the attack on Tesla: Terrorist group active for ten years, but investigators know little about them