David McNew/AFP/Getty Images
Tesla investors are growing more concerned about Elon Musk’s many roles, Wedbush’s Dan Ives said.
That’s because Musk is trying to juggle three companies, which are all at “pivotal” moments.
Ives said investors were worried more failures at SpaceX could take Musk’s attention away from Tesla.
Tesla investors are growing increasingly concerned about Elon Musk juggling his many companies – and continued failures at SpaceX could have a negative impact on Tesla stock, according to Wedbush analyst Dan Ives.
“Hes’ juggling a lot of balls at the same time,” Ives said in an interview with CNBC on Thursday, pointing to Musk’s simultaneous roles as CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and Twitter. In particular, he noted SpaceX’s rocket launch on Thursday, during which the spacecraft exploded shortly after liftoff and coincided with Tesla stock sliding 8%.
Tesla shares were hit largely from the EV maker reporting lower first-quarter profits this week, thanks to recent price cuts on key car models. But the success of Musk’s companies are all “tied together,” Ives said, and investors are growing concerned over Musk’s ability to lead all three.
“Tesla, they’re going through a price war, and at the same time Musk has continued to spend so much time on Twitter. I think from the investor perspective, they’re just concerned with balancing all that at just such a pivotal time for all these companies,” he added. “If SpaceX continues to have more successes or failures, that ultimately takes up more Musk time, which is a negative for Tesla.”
Investors were airing those concerns a lot last year, when Musk first began his ambitious $44 billion revamp of Twitter. Since acquiring the social media platform, Musk has implemented sweeping layoffs, radical cost cuts, and other big switch-ups that involved him sleeping on a couch at the Twitter’s headquarters to fully manage the company.
Tesla investors have pleaded with Musk to step away from the struggling social media platform, which Musk had promised to do if he found someone “foolish” enough to replace him.
Meanwhile, Musk has launched a new startup called X.AI, which he said could develop a rival ChatGPT bot called TruthGPT.
“I do believe we’re getting to a fork-in-the-road period where I think Musk is being stretched in a lot of directions,” Ives said.