Tesla Shares Rally After Expensive Share Slide

The share price in Tesla stabilised on Tuesday, after a massive share slide on Monday that wiped $300 billion off the value of the electric car maker.

On Monday shares in Tesla had continued their losses to reach one-third below their record high in January, down nearly 35 percent from a 26 January peak.

The share price on Monday was continuing the decline from last week , which saw the personal fortune of Tesla founder and chief executive Elon Musk drop by some $27 billion (£19.5bn).

Share recovery

Tesla shares declined by more than 4 percent on Monday, which lowered the company’s market capitalisation down by nearly $300bn to $550bn.

But on Tuesday shares in Tesla rose by almost 20 percent, its biggest daily rise in a year.

Shares in Tesla on Wednesday morning were up 19.64 percent at $673.58, after falling to $563 on close on Monday.

This recovered share price added over $100 billion to its market capitalisation, and means that Tesla is currently valued at $646.5 billion, making it still the world’s most valuable car maker by a long margin.

To put that into context, rival car makers such as Toyota is only valued at $210 billion, and Volkswagen is valued at a mere $132 billion, as of Wednesday 10 March 2021.

Troubled past

And it should be remembered that Tesla’s stock remains up about 70 percent over the past six months.

Not a bad performance for the car maker, after Musk last November admitted that Tesla came within “a month” of bankruptcy in the lead up to the mass production of the Model 3.

Then in December Musk revealed that during Tesla’s most challenging period in 2017, he had reached out to Apple to discuss the firm purchasing the electric car maker.

But Apple’s Tim Cook refused to meet Musk.

Last month the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) questioned Tesla’s design of its semi-automated driving assistance system and condemned the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) for a “hands-off approach” to regulating the increasingly popular systems.

In January NHTSA said it would examine a petition demanding the recall of some 500,000 Tesla electric vehicles over reports of sudden unintended acceleration.