Musk lost his title as the world's richest man.
According to the latest Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Tesla CEO Elon Musk's current net worth is $19.8 billion, surpassed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos with a net worth of $200 billion. This is the first time since the autumn of 2021 that 60 year old Bezos has ascended to the world's richest man's throne.
According to the report, the above ranking is based on market, economic, and other changes to measure personal wealth. Among them, Bezos regained the unofficial title of the world's richest man just as he sold some Amazon stocks. In recent weeks, Bezos has sold over $8.5 billion worth of Amazon (AMZN. US) stocks. Meanwhile, Musk's net asset value has shrunk by $31 billion so far this year, and the stock price of his electric vehicle company Tesla (TSLA. US) has fallen by about 24% so far this year.
It is worth mentioning that the above-mentioned report stated that earlier this year, Musk's $56 billion "sky high" salary plan during his tenure as CEO of Tesla was rejected, which dealt a blow to Musk. On January 30th local time, a judge of the Court of Equity in Delaware ruled that Musk's $56 billion (approximately RMB 400 billion) compensation plan was invalid because Tesla's board of directors failed to prove that the compensation plan was fair.
In the aforementioned lawsuit, the plaintiff and Tesla's minority shareholder Richard Tornetta argued that Musk's CEO compensation plan for 2018 was too high, and the plan was forcefully approved by him, posing a risk of equity dilution to Tesla's shareholders. In addition, Tonetta also believes that Musk cannot focus on managing Tesla.
Musk himself did not directly respond to the ruling, but he posted on social media platform "X" stating that "never register a company in Delaware.". Meanwhile, Musk also initiated a survey, which showed that nearly 88% of users voted in favor of Tesla changing its registered address from Delaware to Texas in the United States.
In fact, Tesla's current stock price is still fluctuating. On March 4th local time, Tesla's (TSLA. US) stock price plummeted by 7.16% to close at $188.14 per share, and its market value evaporated overnight by $46.1 billion, equivalent to approximately RMB 332.3 billion.
Some argue that Tesla's sharp drop in stock price on Monday may be related to its sales data in China. On March 4th, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) released estimated wholesale sales figures for new energy vehicles from major passenger car manufacturers in February 2024. Among them, BYD's wholesale sales for the month were about 122000 vehicles, while Tesla's wholesale sales in China were about 60000 vehicles, which is more than double the difference between the two.
"There are 18 working days in February this year, which is 2 days less than the 20 working days in February 2023. Due to the influence of weak car consumption before and after the Spring Festival holiday, most car companies will take a few more days of annual leave before and after the Spring Festival. Therefore, the effective production and sales time in February this year is very short, and it is expected that the car market sales in February will be at an absolute trough of the year." The China Association of Automobile Manufacturers stated.
Another thing that cannot be ignored is that under the price war of internal competition in the domestic automotive market, Tesla is also under pressure and seeking to "exchange price for quantity". In January of this year, Tesla lowered the price of the updated rear wheel drive model 3 from 259900 yuan by 15500 yuan to 245900 yuan; The price of the Model 3 Long Range Renewal has been reduced by 11500 yuan to 285900 yuan; In March of this year, Tesla launched the Model 3/Y rear wheel drive version with limited time insurance subsidies, designated paint benefits for current vehicles across the range, and low interest financial policies for current vehicles, with profit margins ranging from 8000 yuan to 16600 yuan.
In the view of Cui Dongshu, Secretary General of the National Passenger Car Market Information Joint Conference, the fundamental reason for the recent price war in the passenger car market is the replacement of old technologies by new technologies, and the replacement process of fuel vehicles by new energy vehicles. In the process of establishing a new market order, the competition between new and old manufacturers is fierce. It is expected that this process will continue for several years until a new pattern is formed.
"With the rapid increase in sales of major brands of bicycles by car companies, new technologies such as industry chain integration and integrated die-casting are driving cost sharing. Leading car companies use scale to reduce costs and increase efficiency, achieving good profit growth through low prices." Cui Dongshu said that the potential for cost reduction in new energy vehicles is even greater. An obvious example is that the price of lithium carbonate has skyrocketed in the past two years to nearly 600000 yuan/ton and gradually declined. Recently, it has dropped to below 100000 yuan/ton, creating space for the cost reduction of new energy vehicles.
After the price war in the Chinese market in 2023, Tesla's financial data also changed accordingly. According to financial report data, Tesla's gross profit margin in 2023 was 18.2%, a year-on-year decrease of 7.35 percentage points; Under non GAAP, Tesla's net profit attributable to common shareholders was $10.882 billion, a decrease of 23% year-on-year.
Perhaps due to a lack of confidence, Tesla did not disclose its delivery targets for 2024 as usual during its Q4 2023 financial report. Instead, Tesla publicly stated, "The company will focus on developing the next generation of cars, so the vehicle growth rate in 2024 will be significantly lower than in 2023."
Not long ago, an informal survey conducted by Morgan Stanley on Tesla's institutional investors found that many people were bearish on Tesla and expected the stock to perform poorly in the next 6 to 12 months. The reason Tesla was bearish was because it was excluded from the rise of technology stocks related to artificial intelligence.
"Morgan Stanley's valuation of Tesla's core automotive business only accounts for 22% of its target stock price, while Tesla's other businesses include artificial intelligence, fleet network services and cloud, robotics, software (fully autonomous driving), and supercomputing. Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas said that people's perception of Tesla's progress in the field of artificial intelligence is" very bad ", to the extent that Tesla is not only excluded from the field of artificial intelligence, but also on the other side of the field.".