Tesla CEO Elon Musk said on Thursday that “Tesla is on my mind 24/7,” as he tried to seek to assuage investor concerns that he would be distracted by a Twitter deal that has depressed Tesla stock.
Posting a picture tweet showing a woman (Tesla) who is upset by her boyfriend (Elon) checking out another woman (Twitter), he said, “So may seem like below, but not true.” “To be clear, I’m spending <5% (but actually) of my time on the Twitter acquisition. It ain’t rocket science!” he tweeted.
Musk’s rocket company SpaceX has a launch site called Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, where Tesla opened its new car factory this year.
Tesla stock has lost a third of its value since the billionaire revealed his stake in Twitter in early April and sold $8.5 billion in Tesla stock to help fund his $44 billion Twitter deal.
Stocks were also harmed by China lockdown measures, which slowed Tesla’s production, and Tesla’s exclusion from a widely followed S&P sustainability index.
Tesla supporter Wedbush analyst “Daniel Ives” cut Tesla’s target share price on Thursday due to the China production disruption and warned of “distraction risks” from Musk’s Twitter deal.
Leo KoGuan, a major individual investor in Tesla, demanded on Thursday that the electric carmaker repurchase shares.
“Tesla must announce immediately and buy back $5 billion of Tesla shares from its free cash flow this year and $10 billion from its free cash flow next year, without affecting its existing $18 billion cash reserves with ZERO debt,” KoGuan wrote to Tesla’s head of investor relations, Martin Viecha, in a Twitter message.
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