Tesla's stock had its worst week of 2023, plunging 16% on Elon Musk's earnings-call nightmare

Tesla CEO
Elon Musk.
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Tesla’s stock had its worst five-day stretch of 2023 last week.
Shares plunged 16% as the EV maker missed its quarterly targets and CEO Elon Musk warned of a potential profitability slowdown.
Fellow Big Tech giants Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta, and Amazon are all set to report earnings this week.

Tesla just had its worst week of 2023.

Shares plunged 16% over the five-day stretch ending October 20, as disappointing third-quarter earnings and a disastrous call led by CEO Elon Musk sparked a sell-off.

The nightmarish week wiped nearly $130 million off the EV maker’s total market capitalization, by Insider’s calculations, while Musk’s own personal fortune declined by around $30 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

The stock is still up 72% year-to-date, but has given up some of its gains over the past few months with the early-2023 hype around AI fading and investors starting to fret about the impact of higher interest rates.

On Wednesday, Tesla reported quarterly earnings that fell well short of Wall Street’s expectations. The company posted adjusted earnings-per-share of $0.66, missing the consensus estimate of $0.74, and also underperformed analysts’ revenue forecasts.

Musk then said in a post-earnings call that Tesla had likely “dug [its] own grave with the Cybertruck” due to enormous production challenges, and warned of several economic headwinds that could drag on demand.

One analyst called his performance a “mini-disaster”, while another said the world’s richest man had acted like a “little baby” who was “almost in tears”.

Investors who hold shares in Tesla’s Big Tech rivals will be hoping that the carmaker’s hellish week isn’t a sign of things to come.

Four fellow members of the so-called “Magnificent Seven” group of mega-cap stocks – Microsoft, Google parent Alphabet, Meta Platforms, and Amazon – are all set to report third-quarter earnings of their own this week.