It wasn’t really the best of Christmas Eves for US stock markets. While generally the sentiments remained low across wall street, things looks especially more bleak for Tesla. The electric car maker’s stock saw a sharp 7.6% decline in stock price, with the decline mostly driven by two critical Elon Musk announcements.
To start with, Tesla had announced a third price cut in China in two months, reports Reuters. According to the company’s Chinese website, prices of certain Model 3 cars were cut by up to 7.6 percent. The starting price for a Model 3 in China now is 499,000 yuan ($72,000).
This adjustment was the third in a series of price cuts which the company has announced in China, owing to higher trade tariffs by the Chinese Government. In November, Tesla cut the prices of its Model X and Model S cars by 12 to 26 percent. These trade tariffs are repercussions of a critical trade war going on between world’s top two economies, the U.S. and China.
The second announcement that led to a free falling Tesla stock came directly from Elon Musk, via his favoured mode of every announcement – Twitter. Musk recently tweeted, that the company will reimburse U.S. customers if they miss a tax credit deadline due to Model 3 shipment delays. That — under the context that there are chance of delayed Model 3 shipments — will be a huge financial burden on the company.
Musk’s tweet came in response to a question that if a customer’s pre-December order isn’t delivered before the end of the year, will Tesla reimburse the tax credits they missed out on. Elon Musk replied in the affirmative :
If Tesla committed delivery & customer made good faith efforts to receive before year end, Tesla will cover the tax credit difference— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) 22 December 2018
1 comment