Billionaire businessman Elon Musk said Tesla is on his mind “24/7" in a bid to soothe investor concerns that he is being distracted by his $44 billion Twitter acquisition deal, which has weighed on the stock price of the world's largest electric vehicle maker that he runs.
“To be clear, I’m spending 5 per cent (but actually) of my time on the Twitter acquisition. It ain’t rocket science!” the world’s richest person tweeted to his 94.1 million followers on Thursday.
“Yesterday was Giga Texas, today is Starbase. Tesla is on my mind 24/7.”
Tesla opened its new car factory in Texas this year, and Mr Musk’s rocket company SpaceX has a launch site known as Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas.
Mr Musk has lost $49bn since launching his bid for Twitter last month, partly because the wider market tumbled and some investors in Tesla grew concerned over how he would fund his offer for the San Francisco-based microblogging site.
Mr Musk, 50, remains the world’s richest person, with a fortune of $209.9bn, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
But $60.4bn has been shaved off his wealth this year, trailing only cryptocurrency exchange Binance’s founder Changpeng Zhao, who is down $81bn, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s $62bn drop.
_________________________
Elon Musk - in pictures
-
Mr Musk unveils a new all-wheel-drive version of the Model S car in Hawthorne, California, in 2014. Reuters -
Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk. Getty Images -
Mr Musk with music producer Quincy Jones. AFP -
The wealthiest person in the world with a worth of $274.3 billion, Mr Musk was named 'Person of the Year' by 'Time' magazine in 2021. Getty Images -
Focus on Mr Musk's taxes grew last year as Tesla achieved a rarefied $1 trillion in market value. Reuters -
The billionaire has hit back, saying he does not draw a salary from either SpaceX or Tesla, and pays an effective tax rate of 53 per cent on stock options he exercises. AFP -
Then US president Barack Obama speaks to Mr Musk on a tour of Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida, in 2010. Reuters -
Mr Musk during a television interview after Tesla's initial public offering at the Nasdaq market in New York, in 2010. Reuters -
With former wife Talulah Riley at the 2011 Orange British Academy Film Awards in London. Getty Images -
With Japan's former prime minister Shinzo Abe after a test drive of the Tesla Model S P85D in Palo Alto, California, in 2015. Reuters -
Mr Musk during the 67th International Astronautics Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico, in 2016. EPA -
From left: SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk, Corning chief executive Wendell Weeks, then US president Donald Trump and Johnson & Johnson chief executive Alex Gorsky during a meeting at the White House. AFP -
Mr Musk and former wife Grimes at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, in 2018. AFP -
Mr Musk leaves a court in New York City, in 2019, after a hearing in a lawsuit brought against him by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Getty Images -
A prototype of SpaceX's Starship spacecraft is seen before Mr Musk gives an update on the company's Mars rocket Starship in Boca Chica, Texas, in 2019. Reuters -
Mr Musk at the construction site of the Tesla Gigafactory in Gruenheide, near Berlin, Germany, last year. EPA -
Dancing onstage during a delivery event for Tesla's China-made Model 3 cars in Shanghai. Reuters -
Mikey Day as a lawyer, Cecily Strong as a judge, and host Elon Musk as Wario during the "Wario" sketch on NBC's 'Saturday Night Live', in May. Getty Images -
Mr Musk with Armin Laschet, CDU party federal chairman and prime minister of Germany's North Rhine-Westphalia, talk during a tour of the plant of the future foundry of the Tesla Gigafactory in Grünheide, near Berlin, Germany. Getty Images
_________________________
Tesla shares have lost one third of their value since the billionaire disclosed his stake in Twitter in early April and sold $8.5bn worth of Tesla stocks in a move seen to help finance his $44bn Twitter deal.
Tesla's share price is down 41 per cent since the start of this year, giving the company a market value of about $735bn, well below the $1 trillion market capitalisation it hit on October 25, 2021.
Further hurting stocks are China lockdown measures that dampened Tesla’s production and an exclusion of Tesla from a widely-followed S&P sustainability index that tracks companies on their environmental, social and governance standards.
Twitter said on Tuesday that it is committed to the agreement it struck with Mr Musk. The billionaire businessman had agreed to acquire Twitter for $54.20 a share in cash ― a total of $44bn. The company's share price at the close of trading on Thursday was $37.29. The deal is expected to be completed by the end of this year.
Over the past week, Mr Musk locked horns with Twitter chief executive Parag Agrawal over the company's estimates of spam accounts. Mr Musk tweeted that the “deal cannot move forward” unless the company provides proof that fewer than 5 per cent of its users are fake.
In a filing last week, Twitter said false or spam accounts represented fewer than 5 per cent of its monetisable daily active users during the first quarter.
On Friday, Mr Musk tweeted that his acquisition of Twitter is temporarily on hold pending details on the amount of fake accounts on the platform.
If Mr Musk decides to abandon the agreement, he would have to pay the social media company a $1bn break-up fee.
