Musk tells Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval shares of Tesla are ‘higher than we have the right to deserve” on Saturday.
Tesla’s stock is up nearly 50 percent this year and apparently even its outspoken CEO Elon Musk thinks that is too far.
“I’ve gone on the record several times that the stock price is higher than we have the right to deserve and that’s for sure true based on where we are today, ” Musk told Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval at the National Governors Association summer meeting on Saturday.
Musk added the company’s stock price reflects a “lot of optimism” and that he has tried to taper expectations, but has found that “quite tough” when euphoria is running this high.
Investors Monday started to heed Musk’s advice. The shares traded down by about 3 percent in early trading in New York.
It hasn’t been all rosy for Tesla this year, in fact the stock just went through a bear market. After hitting an all-time high in late June, the shares slid 20 percent through the July 6 close, as concerns mounted about weakening sales results and greater competition. During the first week of July, multiple Wall Street firms — including Goldman Sachs, Bernstein, KeyBanc Capital and Cowen — expressed disappointment over Tesla’s second-quarter delivery results in notes to clients.
Goldman analyst David Tamberrino cited how Tesla’s second-quarter deliveries number released Monday of approximately 22,000 cars missed his forecast of 23,500 and the Wall Street consensus of 24,200.
Investors were also concerned when Tesla did not include in-transit data in its initial second quarter vehicle production report. After the automaker received a deluge of questions, Tesla updated its report on July 7 and clarified that it would include in-transit information for all quarters moving forward.
Nonetheless, the stock is still up 3 percent from that low earlier this month and up 49 percent for 2017.
