Tag Archives: financial markets and investing

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Shell posts profit of nearly $40 billion and announces $4 billion in buybacks

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Hong Kong/London
CNN
 — 

Shell made a record profit of almost $40 billion in 2022, more than double what it raked in the previous year after oil and gas prices soared following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Europe’s largest oil company by revenue reported adjusted full-year earnings of $39.9 billion on Thursday — more than double the $19.3 billion it posted in 2021 — driven by a strong performance in its gas trading business. The company’s stock was up 1.7% in London.

The company reported $9.8 billion in profit in the fourth quarter. Just over 40% of Shell’s full-year earnings came from its integrated gas business, which includes liquified natural gas trading operations.

Shell CEO Wael Sawan said the results “demonstrate the strength of Shell’s differentiated portfolio, as well as our capacity to deliver vital energy to our customers in a volatile world.”

The earnings are the latest in a series of record-setting results by the world’s biggest energy companies, which have enjoyed bumper profits off the back of soaring oil and gas prices.

ExxonMobil this week posted record full-year earnings of $59.1 billion. Last month, Chevron

(CVX) reported a record full-year profit of $36.5 billion.

That has led to renewed calls for higher taxation. Governments in the European Union and the United Kingdom have already imposed windfall taxes on oil company profits, with the proceeds used to help households struggling with rising energy bills.

Shell said it expected to pay an additional $2.3 billion in tax related to the EU windfall tax and the UK energy profits levy. The company paid $13 billion in tax globally in 2022.

Shell

(RDSA) also announced another $4 billion share buyback program and confirmed it would lift its dividend per share by 15% for the fourth quarter.

— This is a developing story and will be updated.

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Gautam Adani’s business loses $50 billion in market value after short seller report

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New Delhi
CNN
 — 

The value of Gautam Adani’s business empire has crashed by more than $50 billion this week since Hindenburg Research, a US firm that makes money from short selling, published a blistering report accusing it of fraud.

India’s Adani Group has denounced Hindenburg’s allegations as “baseless” and “malicious,” and it is considering legal action. But the sharp sell-off in shares, which began Wednesday, accelerated Friday after US hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman said he found the short seller’s report credible.

Hindenburg Research published an investigation on Adani’s conglomerate late on Tuesday, accusing it of “brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud scheme over the course of decades.” It said it had taken a short position in Adani Group companies, meaning it would benefit from a drop in their value.

Shares of those companies — some of which had surged over 500% in the last few years — plunged when India’s stock market opened Wednesday. The rout resumed Friday when trading resumed following a market holiday on Thursday.

Shares of Adani Transmission, Adani Total Gas and Adani Green Energy — three of the group’s seven listed companies — were down 20% each on Friday, while shares of Adani Enterprises, the conglomerate’s flagship company, fell 18%. Friday’s losses wiped out almost $39 billion in market value.

According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Adani is still Asia’s richest man with a personal fortune worth $113 billion, $30 billion more than fellow Indian entrepreneur Mukesh Ambani. Friday’s losses will reduce that gap.

Hindenburg said Thursday that it stood fully by its report and believed any legal action would be “meritless.”

“If Adani is serious, it should also file suit in the US where we operate. We have a long list of documents we would demand in a legal discovery process,” the short seller said in a post on Twitter.

Hindenburg isn’t the first research firm to express concern about the finances of Adani’s sprawling empire, which has borrowed $30 billion to become established in industries ranging from logistics to mining, and is aggressively growing in diverse sectors such as media, data centers, airports and cement.

Ackman weighed into the debate on Twitter Thursday, saying he found the Hindenburg investigation “highly credible and extremely well researched.”

“We are not invested long or short in any of the Adani companies … nor have we done our own independent research,” Ackman added.

Hindenburg’s claims come at a sensitive time. Adani Enterprises is aiming to raise 200 billion rupees ($2.5 billion) by issuing new shares this month. The offer will close on Tuesday.

A college dropout and a self-made industrialist, Adani is the world’s fourth richest man, ahead of Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. He is also seen as a close ally of India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi.

The 60-year old tycoon founded the Adani group over 30 years ago.



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Gautam Adani slams short-seller Hindenburg’s claims as ‘baseless’ and ‘malicious’

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New Delhi
CNN
 — 

India’s Adani Group on Wednesday denounced allegations of fraud made by US-based short seller Hindenburg Research as “baseless” and a “malicious combination of selective misinformation.”

Hindenburg Research published an investigation on billionaire Gautam Adani’s sprawling conglomerate on Tuesday, accusing it of “brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud scheme over the course of decades.”

Hindenburg said it has taken a short position in companies in the Adani Group “through U.S.-traded bonds and non-Indian-traded derivative instruments.” Short sellers aim to make money by betting that the stock price of the companies they target will fall.

Adani’s business empire contains seven listed companies — in sectors ranging from ports to power stations — and shares in most of them fell by between 3% and more than 8% on Wednesday.

The plunge had an immediate impact on the billionaire’s net worth. According to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index, Adani lost nearly $6 billion on Wednesday. He is currently worth $113 billion.

In its investigation, which Hindenburg said took two years to compile, the research firm questioned the “sky-high valuations” of Adani firms and said their “substantial debt” puts the entire group “on a precarious financial footing.”

The research firm concluded its report with 88 questions for the Adani Group. These range from asking for details on Adani’s offshore entities, to why it has “such a convoluted, interlinked corporate structure.”

CNN has not verified the claims in the report, and India’s stock market regulator did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Shares of Adani’s companies have surged in the last few years, making him Asia’s richest man.

In a statement released a few hours after Hindenburg published its report, the Adani Group’s chief financial officer Jugeshinder Singh said that Hindenburg did not make “any attempt to contact us or verify the factual matrix,” adding that the allegations made by the short seller are “stale, baseless and discredited.”

The conglomerate has faced scrutiny from Indian authorities in the past. In 2021, shares in Adani’s companies tumbled after The Economic Times newspaper said that foreign funds that hold stakes worth billions of dollars were frozen by the country’s National Securities Depository. The Adani Group called that report “blatantly erroneous.”

Nate Anderson, who founded Hindenburg Research, has made a name for himself in the past few years by targeting companies that he thinks are overvalued and have suspect financials. Anderson is best known for going after electric truck company Nikola in 2020, calling it an “intricate fraud,” and causing the firm’s stock to plunge sharply. In 2022, Nikola’s founder was convicted by a US jury of fraud in a case alleging he lied to investors about the company’s technology.

But some have accused Hindenburg of trying to push stocks lower with its research reports in order to make a profit.

Its report on the Adani Group comes at a sensitive time. Later this week, Adani Enterprises, the conglomerate’s flagship company, is aiming to raise 200 billion rupees ($2.5 billion) by issuing new shares.

Singh said that the “timing of the report’s publication clearly betrays a brazen, mala fide intention to undermine the Adani Group’s reputation with the principal objective of damaging the upcoming follow-on public offering.”

The conglomerate is also considering taking five new businesses to the stock market in the next two to five years.

A college dropout and a self-made industrialist, Adani is the world’s fourth richest man, ahead of Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index. He is also seen as a close ally of India’s current prime minister, Narendra Modi.

The 60-year-old tycoon founded the Adani group over 30 years ago. It now has established businesses in industries ranging from logistics to mining, and is aggressively growing in diverse sectors such as media, data centers, airports, and cement.

But this is not the first time analysts have expressed fear that the rapid expansion of his business comes with a huge risk. Adani’s juggernaut has been fueled by a $30 billion borrowing binge, making his business one of the most indebted in the country.

Last year, CreditSights, a research firm owned by Fitch Group, published a report about Adani Group titled “Deeply Overleveraged” in which it expressed strong concerns about its debt-funded growth plans.

Adani Group responded to CreditSights with a 15-page report, saying that the “leverage ratios” of its companies “continue to be healthy and are in line with the industry benchmarks in the respective sectors” and that they “have consistently de-levered” in the last nine years.

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Business

Jack Ma to relinquish control of Ant group

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CNN
 — 

Chinese billionaire Jack Ma will no longer control Ant Group after the fintech giant’s shareholders agreed to reshape its shareholding structure, according to a statement released by the company on Saturday.

After the adjustment, Ma’s voting rights will fall to 6.2%, according to the statement and CNN calculations.

Before the restructure, Ma held 50.52% of voting rights at Ant via Hangzhou Yunbo and two other entities, according to its IPO prospectus filed with stock exchanges in 2020.

Ant added in the statement that the voting rights adjustment, a move to make the company’s shareholder structure “more transparent and diversified,” will not result in any change to the economic interests of any shareholders.

Ant said its 10 major shareholders, including Ma, had agreed to no longer act in concert when exercising their voting rights, and would only vote independently, and thus no shareholder would have “sole or joint control over Ant Group.”

The voting rights overhaul came after Chinese regulators pulled the plug on Ant’s $37 billion IPO in November 2020, and ordered the company to restructure its business.

As part of the company’s restructuring, Ant’s consumer finance unit applied for an expansion of its registered capital from $1.2 billion to $2.7 billion. The China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission recently approved the application, according to a government notice issued late last week.

After the fund-raising drive, Ant will control half of its key consumer finance unit, while an entity controlled by the Hangzhou city government will own a 10% stake. Hangzhou is where Alibaba and Ant have been headquartered since their inceptions.

Ant Group is a fintech affiliate of Alibaba, both of which were founded by Ma.

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Business

SEC closes insider trading probe into former Republican senator

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CNN
 — 

The US Securities and Exchange Commission has closed its insider trading investigation into stock trades made by then-Sen. Richard Burr and his brother-in-law at the outset of the pandemic, the former senator announced Friday.

“This week, the SEC informed me that they have concluded their investigation with no action. I am glad to have this matter in the rearview mirror as I begin my retirement from the Senate following nearly three decades of public service,” Burr, a North Carolina Republican, said in a statement.

The announcement comes nearly two years after the Justice Department closed its own review of the matter, which was launched in March 2020, soon after questionably timed trades by Burr and other lawmakers became publicly known.

Burr sold $1.65 million in stock on February 13, 2020, previous court filings by the SEC revealed. The sales included tens of thousands of dollars in stock in the hospitality industry, which was particularly hard hit in coronavirus outbreak.

The SEC declined CNN’s request for comment.

The trades made by Burr and his brother-in-law first attracted scrutiny because of Burr’s position on Senate committees overseeing health policy and US intelligence. The Intelligence Committee, which Burr chaired at the time, had received periodic briefings on the coronavirus as the outbreak began to spread but it did not receive such a briefing the week of the trades.

The SEC previously said Burr possessed “material nonpublic information concerning Covid-19 and its potential impact on the U.S. and global economies.”

In the DOJ’s probe of the stock trade, Burr turned over his official Senate phone to the FBI after a warrant was served, an official confirmed to CNN at the time. Use of the warrant had been signed off at the highest levels of the Justice Department, as is protocol, according to the source.

The Senate-issued cellphone was Burr’s primary device and investigators had asked Apple for information from Burr’s iCloud backup, a person familiar with the investigation previously said.

Burr had consistently denied any wrongdoing, saying he made the trades based solely on public information, not information he received from the committee.

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FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried arrives in court to face charges

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New York
CNN
 — 

Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced founder of bankrupt crypto exchange FTX, has arrived at a Manhattan federal court where he is set to appear to face charges that include cheating investors out of billions of dollars.

Authorities have accused Bankman-Fried of stealing customer funds from FTX to cover loans taken out by Alameda Research, FTX’s affiliated crypto hedge fund. They also say he used those funds to make investments in other companies and donate to campaigns of politicians from both parties to influence public policy.

In public statements following FTX’s collapse in November, Bankman-Fried has insisted that he didn’t commit fraud and was unaware that customer funds were being used improperly.

He is expected to plead not guilty Tuesday.

Two senior executives from Bankman-Fried’s crypto businesses — Gary Wang, the co-founder of FTX, and Caroline Ellison, who served as Alameda’s CEO — have pleaded guilty to multiple criminal charges and are cooperating with federal prosecutors.

Ellison apologized while entering her plea last month, telling the court that she “agreed with Mr. Bankman-Fried and others to not publicly disclose the true nature of the relationship between Alameda and FTX, including Alameda’s credit arrangement.”

As part of his release, Bankman-Fried is under house arrest at his parents’ home in Palot Alto, California. He is wearing a monitoring device and has surrendered his passport.

He could face up to 115 years in prison if convicted on all charges.

Last month, a US judge released him on a $250 million bond in his first appearance on American soil since his arrest in the Bahamas, where he lived and ran his businesses.

Bankman-Fried’s parents, both law professors at Stanford who co-signed his bond, have “become the target of intense media scrutiny, harassment, and threats,” defense lawyers wrote in a letter to the court, while asking to redact the names of two other co-signers, known as “sureties.”

“There is serious cause for concern that the two additional sureties would face similar intrusions on their privacy as well as threats and harassment if their names appear unredacted on their bonds or their identities are otherwise publicly disclosed,” the letter states.

Prosecutors allege that Bankman-Fried orchestrated “one of the biggest financial frauds in American history,” stealing billions of dollars from FTX customers to cover losses at its sister hedge fund, Alameda Research.

FTX and Alameda both filed for bankruptcy in December after investors rushed to pull their deposits from the exchange, sparking a liquidity crisis and triggering contagion across the crypto industry.

FTX’s new CEO, John Ray III, who made his name overseeing the liquidation of Enron in the early 2000s, said in a congressional hearing that customer funds deposited on the FTX site were commingled with funds at Alameda, which made a number of speculative, high-risk bets.

Ray described the situation at the two companies as “old-fashioned embezzlement” at the hands of a small group of “grossly inexperienced and unsophisticated individuals.”

— CNN’s Allison Morrow and Samantha Murphy Kelly contributed to this report.

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Business

Tesla shares are down 70% for the year

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New York
CNN
 — 

Tesla’s stock is finishing out its tumultuous year with yet more turbulence: It’s up almost 6% Thursday, but still down more than 10% since last week. And a new cut to its price target from Morgan Stanley isn’t helping.

Year-to-date, the stock is down about 70%. Morgan Stanley analysts on Thursday said that the company’s sliding stock price represents a buying opportunity, but they cut its price target from $330 per share to $250. Tesla shares are trading at $122, with the stock up about 8% Thursday.

Morgan Stanley still believes the company is somewhat undervalued as a result of the big recent sell-offs, citing its head start over the electric car competition, and potential tax advantages as a result of the Inflation Reduction Act passed earlier this year.

The losses, however, have further put a dent in the fortunes of one of the world’s richest people. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, CEO Elon Musk is now worth $132 billion — less than half what he was worth at the beginning of the year. He lost the world’s richest person title two weeks ago to Bernard Arnault, the chairman of French luxury goods giant LVMH

(LVMHF).

A popular misconception has emerged about Elon Musk and Tesla: The megabillionaire’s love affair with Twitter is the main reason Tesla shares have lost so much value this year.

Even as Musk signals he may give up his CEO title at Twitter, investors became concerned that the outlook for Tesla’s sales and profit is taking a turn for the worse. A sign of the weakening demand: Tesla has announced a rare sale. The company offered two rebates for buyers who take delivery of a vehicle before the end of the year, initially offering a $3,750 discount earlier this month. Tesla then doubled that rebate to $7,500 last Thursday.

“Tesla clearly is starting to see demand cracks in China and in the US at a time that EV competition is increasing across the board,” said Dan Ives, tech analyst with Wedbush Securities and a Tesla bull who cut his price target for the stock last Friday from $250 to $175. “The price cuts that Tesla enacted was the straw that broke the camel’s back on the stock.”

Another reason Tesla’s stock is sinking: The US economy could tip into recession next year, hurting car sales. Musk said on a Twitter Spaces call two weeks ago that he foresees the economy will be in a “serious recession” in 2023.

“I think there is going to be some macro drama that’s higher than people currently think,” he said, according to Reuters, adding that homes and cars will get “disproportionately impacted” by economic conditions.

Part of the problem with Tesla’s stock price is that critics question whether it was ever worth the trillion-dollar valuation it had at the start of the year. At its peak, Tesla was worth more than the 12 largest automakers on the planet combined, despite having a fraction of the sales of any of them. Today it is worth $399 billion.

“It got ahead of itself in the near-term,” said Gene Munster of Loup Ventures, another Tesla fan. “I still believe this can be a much bigger company. I think it will see those kinds of numbers again. But it could take a long, long time to get there.”

Tesla’s growth prospects – a target of 50% sales growth annually, helped drive that valuation. It conceded in October that it will miss that sales target for this year.

The stock’s climb to dizzying heights – rising 743% in 2020 alone – was driven by Musk’s reputation as a genius who would disrupt the massive global auto industry.

“Tesla was viewed as a disruptive technology company, not as an automaker, and a large part of that premium is related to Musk,” said Ives.

Critics of Tesla said much of its sky-high valuation was based on promises that Musk made about future products, many of which came years after they were originally promised.

A prime example is the Cybertruck, the Tesla pickup truck, first unveiled three years ago with promises that production would start in 2021.

Now production is slated to start next year, with a ramp-up in production in 2024, putting it years behind other electric pickup offerings from Ford and upstart EV maker Rivian, both of which have electric pickups available for purchase today. It could also trail planned electric pickup offerings from General Motors.

“Elon Musk has a pathological problem with the truth,” said Gordon Johnson, one of the largest critics of Tesla among analysts. “When people say he’s a genius and innovator, it’s based on all his promises he never lives up to.”

Johnson said Tesla shares will have a much steeper fall ahead, once it starts being priced like other automakers rather than on its promises. He said that for Tesla to hit its growth targets it needs to be building new plants almost every year, but that new factories in Germany and Texas that opened in spring are still not operating at full capacity. And he said that its plant in China has had to scale back production due to weak sales in the market in the face of the Covid restrictions.

“Demand in the US has collapsed,” he said. “Two months ago, your wait time was two or three months. Now you can get one immediately. They’re going to build more cars than they sell for a third straight quarter. It’s the definition of excess capacity.”

Tesla is still by far the largest EV maker worldwide, although that title is being challenged in some key markets, by Volkswagen in Europe and by BYD in China. And more competition is coming from established automakers such as Ford and GM.

That’s not to say Twitter has played no role in Tesla’s stock price demise this year: Tesla shares have lost over 65% of their value since Musk’s interest in Twitter was first disclosed in April, with a nearly 50% decline since he closed on the deal in late October.

Investors have been disappointed that Musk appears to be paying for so much of his $44 billion purchase of Twitter by selling Tesla stock. Musk, Tesla’s largest shareholder, has sold $23 billion worth of Tesla shares since his interest in Twitter became public in April.

On a Twitter Spaces call last week call, Musk promised he was done selling shares of Tesla

(TSLA) stock until at least 2024, if not beyond. But he hasn’t lived up to a previous promise in April that he was done selling Tesla

(TSLA) shares, selling $14.4 billion of that stock since that time.

“It’s been a Pinocchio situation for Musk saying he is done selling stock. Investors want to see him walk the walk and not just talk the talk,” said Ives.

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Business partners turn on Sam Bankman-Fried

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New York
CNN
 — 

The stunning collapse of one of crypto’s most prominent firms has quickly morphed into a legal battle pitting former executives and ex-romantic partners against one another.

Last week, as FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was being extradited to the United States from the Bahamas, two of his former business partners pleaded guilty to multiple charges of fraud and conspiracy.

Caroline Ellison, the 28-year-old former CEO of the crypto hedge fund Alameda, apologized before a federal judge in New York, saying that she and her former associates knowingly stole billions of dollars from customers of Bankman-Fried’s FTX exchange and sought to cover it up, according to court transcripts.

“I am truly sorry for what I did,” Ellison told the court. “I knew that it was wrong.”

Ellison told the court that Alameda had a virtually unlimited borrowing facility in FTX, and that she knew the exchange would need to use customer funds to finance loans to the hedge fund. She also agreed to keep the two firms’ unusually close relationship hidden from investors and customers.

From July through October, she told the court, Ellison agreed with Bankman-Fried and others to provide “materially misleading financial statements to Alameda’s lenders,” and prepared balance sheets that concealed the extent of Alameda’s borrowing.

Ellison has been charged with seven criminal counts, including conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering. She and Bankman-Fried were close business associates who briefly dated.

Another associate, Gary Wang, FTX’s former chief technology officer, pleaded guilty to four counts of similar charges.

Wang told the court that part of his role at FTX included making changes to the exchange’s code that would grant Alameda “special privileges” on FTX.

“I knew what I was doing was wrong,” he said.

Both Ellison and Wang are cooperating with federal prosecutors, making them potentially damning witnesses against Bankman-Fried, who has repeatedly denied intentionally defrauding customers and investors.

Bankman-Fried, 30, appeared Thursday in a US courtroom in New York, where a federal judge released him on a $250 million bond. He is required to surrender his passport and remain under house arrest at his parents’ home in Palo Alto, California.

Although $250 million is an extraordinary sum, Bankman-Fried won’t have to pay it unless he violates the terms of his bail agreement or fails to show up to court. The atypical bail plan was agreed to as part of his commitment to waive his extradition fight.

Following his court appearance, Bankman-Fried was spotted in a business class lounge at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport. Crypto reporter Tiffany Fong also tweeted a photo showing Bankman-Fried on an American Airlines flight.

Bankman-Fried’s legal team confirmed to CNN Business that he had arrived in Palo Alto and was home with his parents. His lawyer declined to comment on the guilty pleas by Ellison and Wang.

The federal judge Thursday said Bankman-Fried would be arraigned on eight criminal counts including fraud and conspiracy at an unspecified future date.

Prosecutors allege that Bankman-Fried orchestrated “one of the biggest financial frauds in American history,” stealing billions of dollars from FTX customers to cover losses at Alameda and to enrich himself. If convicted, he could face life in prison.

Bankman-Fried, prior to his arrest in the Bahamas earlier this month, had sought to portray himself as a hapless entrepreneur who got out over his skis. He repeatedly apologized to customers and to FTX staff, saying he “f—ed up,” while denying that he knowingly defrauded anyone.

— CNN’s Lauren del Valle and Kara Scannell contributed reporting.



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Business

Elon Musk’s Twitter obsession isn’t the core reason for Tesla stock’s plunge

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New York
CNN
 — 

A popular misconception has emerged about Elon Musk and Tesla: The megabillionaire’s love affair with Twitter is the main reason Tesla shares have lost so much value this year. But Tesla’s steep stock selloff this week proved that the problems at Musk’s car company go well beyond Twitter.

Even as Musk signals he may give up his CEO title at Twitter, investors became concerned that the outlook for Tesla’s sales and profit is taking a turn for the worse. A sign of the weakening demand: Tesla has announced a rare sale. The company offered two rebates for buyers who take delivery of a vehicle before the end of the year, initially offering a $3,750 discount earlier this month. Tesla then doubled that rebate to $7,500 Thursday.

“Tesla clearly is starting to see demand cracks in China and in the US at a time that EV competition is increasing across the board,” said Dan Ives, tech analyst with Wedbush Securities and a Tesla bull who cut his price target for the stock Friday from $250 to $175. “The price cuts that Tesla enacted was the straw that broke the camel’s back on the stock.”

Another reason Tesla’s stock is sinking: The US economy could tip into recession next year, hurting car sales. Musk said on an Twitter Spaces call Thursday he foresees the economy will be in a “serious recession” in 2023.

“I think there is going to be some macro drama that’s higher than people currently think,” he said, according to Reuters, adding that homes and cars will get “disproportionately impacted” by economic conditions.

Part of the problem with Tesla’s stock price is that critics question whether it was ever worth the trillion-dollar valuation it had at the start of the year. At its peak, Tesla was worth more than the 12 largest automakers on the planet combined, despite having a fraction of the sales of any of them. Today it is worth $399 billion.

“It got ahead of itself in the near-term,” said Gene Munster of Loup Ventures, another Tesla fan. “I still believe this can be a much bigger company. I think it will see those kinds of numbers again. But it could take a long, long time to get there.”

Tesla’s growth prospects – a target of 50% sales growth annually, helped drive that valuation. It conceded in October that it will miss that sales target for this year.

The stock’s climb to dizzying heights – rising 743% in 2020 alone – was driven by Musk’s reputation as a genius who would disrupt the massive global auto industry.

“Tesla was viewed as a disruptive technology company, not as an automaker, and a large part of that premium is related to Musk,” said Ives.

Critics of Tesla said much of its sky-high valuation was based on promises that Musk made about future products, many of which came years after they were originally promised.

A prime example is the Cybertruck, the Tesla pickup truck, first unveiled three years ago with promises that production would start in 2021. Now it is slated to start production next year, with a ramp-up in production in 2024, putting it years behind other electric pickup offerings from Ford and upstart EV maker Rivian, both of which have electric pickups available for purchase today. It could also trail planned electric pickup offerings from General Motors.

“Elon Musk has a pathological problem with the truth,” said Gordon Johnson, one of the largest critics of Tesla among analysts. “When people say he’s a genius and innovator, it’s based on all his promises he never lives up to.”

Johnson said Tesla shares will have a much steeper fall ahead, once it starts being priced like other automakers rather than on its promises. He said that for Tesla to hit its growth targets it needs to be building new plants almost every year, but that new factories in Germany and Texas that opened in spring are still not operating at full capacity. And he said that its plant in China has had to scale back production due to weak sales in the market in the face of the Covid restrictions.

“Demand in the US has collapsed,” he said. “Two months ago, your wait time was two or three months. Now you can get one immediately. They’re going to build more cars than they sell for a third straight quarter. It’s the definition of excess capacity.”

Tesla is still by far the largest EV maker worldwide, although that title is being challenged in some key markets, by Volkswagen in Europe and by BYD in China. And more competition is coming from established automakers such as Ford and GM.

That’s not to say Twitter has played no role in Tesla’s stock price demise this year: Tesla shares have lost 66% of their value since Musk’s interest in Twitter was first disclosed in April, with a 45% decline since he closed on the deal in late October.

Investors have been disappointed that Musk appears to be paying for so much of his $44 billion purchase of Twitter by selling Tesla stock. Musk, Tesla’s largest shareholder, has sold $23 billion worth of Tesla shares since his interest in Twitter became public in April.

On Thursday’s Twitter Spaces call, Musk promised he was done selling shares of Tesla stock until at least 2024, if not beyond. But he hasn’t lived up to a previous promise in April that he was done selling Tesla shares, selling $14.4 billion of that stock since that time.

“It’s been a Pinocchio situation for Musk saying he is done selling stock. Investors want to see him walk the walk and not just talk the talk,” said Ives.

Another Twitter factor: Musk named himself CEO of Twitter, the third major company he leads, along with Tesla and SpaceX. So, many people assumed that Musk’s loss of focus on Tesla has spooked its former fans on Wall Street.

But this week began with Musk running a poll – on Twitter of course – asking if he should give up the CEO title at his social media plaything. He promised he would comply with the result, and 57.5% of those who voted said they want him gone.

That departure may take a while – Musk tweeted he will resign “as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job!” And the same tweet he cautioned that even if he gives up the CEO title at Twitter, he’s not walking away totally, saying that he plans to “just run the software & servers teams” after finding a new “fool” to be CEO.

The poll results late Sunday were enough to lift Tesla shares in early trading Monday, but the shares ended the day slightly lower, and have lost significantly more ground every day since. Tesla shares fell 9% Thursday, and it ended the week down 18% after another 2% drop on Friday.

And then there’s the question of how much damage the debacle at Twitter has done to the Tesla brand. Musk has fired thousands of employees, banned journalists while allowing Donald Trump and other previously banned accounts back online, called for the prosecution of Dr. Anthony Fauci, embraced conspiracy theories and made anti-trans statements in his short tenure as CEO.

It may have endeared him to some but angered other potential buyers, including liberals who might be willing to pay a premium for a more environmentally friendly vehicle.

“I think it was measurable damage,” said Munster, who believes the publicity over his time at Twitter cost Tesla 5% of its sales.



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Business

Dow and S&P 500 updates: Stock market news

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New York
CNN
 — 

The good vibes on Wall Street are fading fast: US slid tumbled yet again on Friday as investors come to grips with a souring economy.

The Dow ended the day down 282 points, or 0.9%. The S&P 500 fell 1.1%, and the Nasdaq Composite was 1% lower.

The sell-off has been broad, but the real estate and consumer discretionary sectors were been hit the hardest, down more than 3% and 1.8%, respectively.

Is the Fed to blame? Sentiment on Wall Street can change on a dime, and this week is evidence of that: The Dow has tumbled about 1,050 points just since the Federal Reserve’s dour policy update at 2 p.m. ET Wednesday.

CNN Business’ Fear and Greed Index, a measure of market sentiment, finally dipped into “Fear” Friday. The market has been in “Greed” mode for weeks.

Stocks had been riding high this month on weaker-than-expected inflation and a number of stronger-than-expected reports on the broad economy and the job market. Investors were hopeful that the Federal Reserve could slow its historic pace of rate hikes and inflation could right itself sometime next year without tipping the economy into a recession.

That excitement continued right up until Fed Chair Jerome Powell crashed Wall Street’s party Wednesday with some tough news: Economists at the Fed believe US gross domestic product, the broadest measure of America’s economy, will barely grow next year.

And they predict the US unemployment rate will rise to 4.6% by the end of 2023, which means roughly 1.6 million more Americans will be out of work.

Compounding fears from those Fed forecasts was a worse-than-expected retail sales report Thursday that sent stocks plunging. The Dow lost 765 points Thursday, or 2.3%, the index’s worst day in three months. The S&P 500 lost 2.5% and the Nasdaq tumbled 3.2%, their worst days in a month.

Now, economists at Moody’s Analytics predict America’s economy will grow at an annualized rate of just 1.9% in the fourth quarter, down from its previous estimate of 2.7%. Weak manufacturing and retail reports spooked Moody’s analysts, who also lowered their 2023 GDP forecast to just 0.9%, much lower than 2022’s 1.9% estimate.

“This leaves little room for anything to go wrong,” Moody’s economist Matt Colyar wrote in an analysis.

Not helping stocks: It’s December. Many traders are on vacation, volume is low and tiny moves can get exacerbated.

As my colleague Matt Egan notes, the market may be in a lose-lose situation. Good economic news has been bad news for investors, because the Fed is trying to cool down the economy as part of its inflation-fighting campaign. But bad economic news is also bad for investors – and everyone – because it raises the risk of a recession.

Adobe

(ADBE) and Facebook parent company Meta are the markets largest gainers today, up 3% and 2.8%, respectively. Adobe

(ADBE) shares soared after the company reported better-than-expected quarterly earnings and guidance. Meta, which is still down nearly 65% for the year, saw a tick after JPMorgan upgraded shares of the company to neutral from overweight.

– CNN’s Nicole Goodkind and Matt Egan contributed to this report

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