As Tesla’s shares continue their monthslong slump, even its executives and board members are starting to jump ship.
As ABC News reports, four top officers at the company offloaded over $100 million in shares since early last month — suggesting that even insiders see troubling days ahead for the Elon Musk-run company.
Since Trump’s inauguration in early January, Tesla’s shares have been getting hammered, the result of widespread market pessimism, an aging vehicle lineup — and perhaps mainly animosity aimed at Musk, who has been rampaging through the federal government with the help of his so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
The company’s shares have plummeted over 40 percent since the beginning of the year, wiping out all gains Tesla had made since Trump was reelected in November.
Sales numbers have fallen off a cliff in key markets around the world. Tesla’s performance is down in almost every single European market. Even sales in China, one of the company’s most lucrative markets, are dropping.
Even Musk’s brother Kimbal has seemingly had enough, unloading 75,000 shares worth around $27 million last month, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
According to a separate document filed last week, longtime Musk ally James Murdoch sold around $13 million on the same day Tesla had its worst single-day decline since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Whenever insiders, including directors, are selling shares, it’s not a positive signal,” University of Florida finance professor Jay Ritter told ABC.
However, two sales by Tesla’s board chairman Robyn Denholm, totaling more than $75 million, were planned months ago as part of a sales plan in a common practice, per Ritter.
And not everybody agrees that executives are getting cold feet. It could also be a sign that higher-ups are looking for a correction.
“While a sale doesn’t necessarily mean an executive or board member feels negatively about a company’s outlook, it could mean they think the stock is at a fair price or even overvalued,” research firm Morningstar analyst Seth Goldstein told ABC.
Stilll, Musk’s track record is dicey. Could Tesla suffer a similar fate as Twitter, which the mercurial CEO infamously acquired for $44 billion in 2022? Musk’s erratic management and extremely polarizing behavior have erased an estimated 80 percent of its value in just a few years.
Without any enthusiasm from consumers and existing owners plastering anti-Musk stickers on their Teslas’ bumpers, the EV maker’s future is as uncertain as ever.
One thing’s for sure: a lot is riding on the company’s hail mary, in the form of a fleet of “Cybercab” robotaxis that it’s promised to reveal this summer.
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