With these remarks, Elon Musk brought down the entire Electric Vehicle industry down.
Elon Musk announced six months ago that he would no longer participate in investor conference calls unless he had “something important” to discuss. He should’ve stuck to his guns and carried out his plan.
After missing Tesla’s third-quarter call, he returned on Wednesday to address the company’s historic fourth-quarter results and revenue.
Despite Tesla’s positive financial results, his statements on the conference call this week alarmed investors.
On Thursday, Tesla (TSLA) suffered its worst day in months, falling 11.6 percent and dragging other EV stocks down with it.
Musk concentrated his remarks on Tesla’s supply chain troubles, which had harmed the company significantly less than other automakers.
Although Musk stated that Tesla is on track to achieve “comfortably above 50% growth in 2022” and that the chip shortage is “better than last year,” he also stated that the supply chain issue “remains a concern that could delay the deployment of new vehicles that were expected as soon as this year.”
CONTINUE>>>With these remarks, Elon Musk brought down the entire Electric Vehicle industry down.
He stated that the Cybertruck, Tesla’s first pickup, as well as a new Roadster and a semi-truck, will be delayed until at least 2023.
He expressed his hope that Tesla will be successful “Hopefully next year, we’ll be able to put those into production. That is very likely the case.”
Tesla investors didn’t want to hear it, especially as the rivalry heats up: Rivian, an upstart electric vehicle manufacturer, is already producing and marketing its electric pickup, which was just named Truck of the Year by Motor Trend.
Ford (F) aims to begin production of the F-150 Lightning EV in the spring, with a target of 80,000 trucks per year to match significant pre-orders.
GM stated this week that it will begin producing electric versions of its Silverado and Sierra pickup trucks in 2024.
These comments Elon Musk made on the phone angered many Wall Analysts.
Musk made no mention of the situation at other EV companies in his remarks.
However, all pure-play EV stocks dropped substantially on Thursday.
Rivian was down 10.5 percent, Lucid was down 14.1 percent, and Chinese EV producer Nio (NIO) was down 6.8 percent in the US.
Musk’s comments, according to Ives, aroused concerns that if a large EV manufacturer like Tesla is having troubles, its smaller upstart competitors may be suffering even more.
Despite the sell-off, which continued on Friday, Tesla’s shares are worth more than the combined market capitalization of the world’s top ten automakers.
Ives said that the investors wanted confidence from Musk, instead, all they got was him talking about supply chain and robots.
Musk’s remarks on the call contrasted sharply with Apple (AAPL) CEO Tim Cook’s performance on the company’s call on Thursday evening.
Cook, like almost every other manufacturing company on the planet, had very excellent fourth-quarter numbers to report and is grappling with supply concerns.