Tesla's stock price fell 3.55% to close at $149.93 on Thursday. It once fell to $148.70 intraday, a one-year low.
Tesla's stock price has fallen by about 39% so far this year, taking back all of the gains of the past year. The electric car maker was affected by falling sales and significant discounts designed to attract more buyers.
Deutsche Bank downgraded Tesla's stock rating from “buy” to “hold” on Thursday and lowered its target price from $189 to $123. Deutsche Bank said that the reason it previously gave a “buy” rating was because they wanted Tesla to launch the “Model 2,” an affordable electric car that costs 25,000 US dollars next year, but since Tesla focuses on autonomous robot taxis, the model is rumored to have been cancelled.
Now, Deutsche Bank analyst Emmanuel Rosner (Emmanuel Rosner) writes that Tesla's future is closely linked to “breaking the code for completely driverless cars,” which represents “significant technical, regulatory, and operational challenges.”
“We think Tesla's transformation changes our arguments and are concerned that the stock will need to go through a potentially painful ownership base transition,” Rosner said. He pointed out that electric vehicle investors may begin to “give up” and be replaced by “artificial intelligence/technology investors with a longer time span.”
As Tesla's stock price continues to fall, Musk's personal wealth has shrunk by 59.2 billion US dollars so far this year, falling to 170 billion US dollars as of Thursday's closing. The gap with Zuckerberg widened further. The latter surpassed Musk on Wednesday to become the third richest person in the world, with a net worth of 178 billion US dollars as of Thursday's closing.
