Yahoo Autos Tesla Lost Almost $100 Billion In Valuation So Far This Year
Good morning! It’s Tuesday, January 16, 2024, and this is The Morning Shift, your daily roundup of the top automotive headlines from around the world, in one place. Here are the important stories you need to know.
1st Gear: Telsa Lost $94 Billion In Two Weeks
By all accounts, Tesla had a great 2023 when it came to its share prices, which more than doubled in just 12 months. However, the times are a-changin’, and Elon Musk’s Austin, Texas-based automaker is off to its worst start to any year in 2024. It’s happening just as car companies come to terms with slowing growth in demand for EVs.
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The hit to Tesla’s market capitalization to start the year is the biggest the company has seen over a similar period since it went public in 2010. In percentage terms, Tesla’s 12% drop since the start of January is the worst since 2016, when the stock fell 14% over the first nine trading days of the year.
To make matters worse, the odds of an imminent turnaround for the EV maker don’t look good.
Tesla has been cutting prices on its cars aggressively since early 2023 in an effort to boost demand. But the result has been a steady erosion of its once-hefty profit margin. Tesla’s automotive gross margin ex-regulatory credits for the third quarter fell to 16.3% from 27.9% a year ago. And the pressure is only mounting, now that production workers at Tesla’s US plants are getting pay raises.
CEO Elon Musk is obviously taking a pretty big personal hit because of this news. Don’t worry, he’s still the world’s richest person (and he gained more wealth than anyone in 2023), but he has seen his net worth shrink by $23 billion so far this year. How will the poor guy afford rent?
2nd Gear: Lamborghini Sold Over 10,000 Cars In 2023
Unlike Elon Musk, it seems like the rest of the rich are getting richer, because Lamborghini just had its best sales year ever, selling over 10,000 vehicles in 2023. The news came from its Chairman and Chief Executive Stephan Winkelmann, who posted on Linkedin that the automaker “reached another historic milestone.” From Reuters:
Supported by the success of its Urus SUV, which now costs over 230,000 euros ($250,000), Lamborghini has in recent years expanded its output, relying on solid demand from wealthy car lovers.
The carmaker, a subsidiary of Germany’s Volkswagen, delivered a total of 10,112 sports cars and SUVs last year, up from over 9,200 vehicles in 2022, a slide attached to Winkelmann’s post showed.
Rival Ferrari, which will release 2023 data later this year, including those on car sales, shipped more than 13,200 cars in 2022.
Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) was the region that saw the biggest increase in deliveries for Lamborghini last year, with a 14% rise to nearly 4,000 vehicles, the slide showed. Sales in the America region rose 9% to 3,465, while they grew 4% in the Asia Pacific region to 2,660.
Lamborghini’s range also includes two super-sports cars, the Huracan 10-cylinder and the Revuelto 12-cylinder, its first plug-in hybrid model, which was presented last year. The line-up is set to become all hybrid in the course of 2024, with the new Urus and a new car replacing the Huracan.
This is really heartwarming news to read as I look over my student debt payments from my tiny one-bedroom apartment.
3rd Gear: Musk Wants 25 Percent Voting Control At Tesla
Tesla CEO Elon Musk said he would be “uncomfortable” growing the Austin, Texas-based automaker into a leader in artificial intelligence and robotics without having at least a 25 percent voting control in the company.
That works out to be nearly double his current stake of 13 percent. You may remember that Musk did at one point own more of Tesla, but he sold off billions of dollars in shares in 2022 to help finance his $44 billion purchase of Twitter. Business genius, this guy. From Reuters:
