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Sometimes one has no choice but to concede that Elon Musk is his own worst enemy. After all, just as Tesla shares were poised to stage a tentative recovery from the liquidation fest over the past couple of weeks, Musk’s comments on Ketamine use have again jolted investors’ confidence.
❖ Elon Musk Says Ketamine Prescription is in Investors Best Interests – Report
Elon Musk said his use of ketamine alleviates periods of low mood and is in the best interest of investors during an interview with former CNN anchor Don Lemon, as reported by Bloomberg.
— *Walter Bloomberg (@DeItaone) March 18, 2024
To wit, Bloomberg has now come out with the scoop that Elon Musk asserted in his interview with Don Lemon that his Ketamine use was in the best interest of the shareholders as it helped to alleviate “low mood” episodes. Bear in mind that Musk canceled X’s deal with Don Lemon in the aftermath of that ill-fated interview, which the CEO of Tesla characterized as akin to “Jeff Zucker talking through Don,” in an allusion to Lemon’s supposed ideological synchronicity with the former President of CNN.
“We are lowering our Tesla estimates to better reflect what we believe are both production (e.g. Model 3 ramp pace, and downtime in Berlin tied to the Red Sea conflict/power loss) and market headwinds,” Goldman Sachs
Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs has now become the latest Wall Street player to lower its price target on Tesla shares. To wit, the investment bank has now lowered its target on the stock from $220 to $190, citing idiosyncratic and industry-wide production and delivery challenges as well as “market headwinds.”
We reported last week that one of the biggest Tesla bulls now sees the EV giant’s shares potentially tagging the $100 price level. Morgan Stanley’s Adam Jonas jolted Tesla bulls when he declared that Tesla’s “$100 bear case” was now in play over the next few months. This aligned with Wells Fargo issuing Tesla’s first “sell” rating of the year last week, with the bank slashing its target on Tesla shares from $200 to $125.
Tesla has been throwing everything, including the proverbial kitchen sink, at its persistent anemic demand problem. However, recently the EV giant has been signaling via its strategic pricing moves that the demand for its products appears to be stabilizing, albeit at a lower-than-anticipated level. Accordingly, the EV giant’s shares were up as much as 3 percent in today’s pre-market trading session.
Meanwhile, $TSLA said on Saturday it would increase the price for its Model Y electric vehicles (EV) in a number of European countries on March 22 by approximately EUR 2K ($2,177).
— notreload (@thudderwicks) March 18, 2024
For instance, Tesla hiked the price of its Model Y in a number of key European countries by 2,000 Euros this weekend.
$TSLA had raised the prices of its Model Y rear-wheel drive and long-range vehicles by $1K to $43,990 and $48,990, respectively, on March 1. https://t.co/fNBg3O3SnF
— notreload (@thudderwicks) March 18, 2024
The EV giant has also increased the price of certain variants of the Model Y in the US by $1,000, signaling a tentative shift toward boosting its depressed margins.
Tesla are now discounting new (not demo) M3 Highland inventory by up to 10% in France as part of the quarter end push. https://t.co/Ijd0FR2ApD
— Tesla Info (@TeslaInfoCom) March 18, 2024
Do note that Tesla is not uniformly increasing the prices of its products. After all, it just discounted the newly launched Model 3 Highland by up to 10 percent in France.
Future Fund’s Gary Black recently noted that Wall Street might already be discounting a significantly reduced Q1 delivery tally of between 425,000 and 440,000 units. What’s more, it appears increasingly likely that Tesla will struggle to deliver even 2 million vehicles for the entire 2024.