Tesla stock had its worst week since Mar. 2020 amid wild week for Musk

Tesla shares dropped nearly 16% during what CEO Elon Musk called a “very intense 7 days indeed” to considered one of his 108 million followers on Twitter.

Tesla shares closed at $265.25 on Friday, Sept. 30. At market’s close one week later, Tesla shares were trading at $223.07, a decline of nearly 16%. It was the worst week for the stock since Mar. 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic began to grip the U.S., shutting down businesses and public life.

Over the weekend, Tesla reported electric vehicle production and delivery numbers that didn’t meet analysts’ expectations.

On Monday, Musk proceeded to fire up a political firestorm by opining about how he thought Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine ought to be resolved.

After that, public records revealed that Musk had informed the Delaware Chancery Court that he would complete a $44 billion acquisition of Twitter in October, a deal he had been attempting to evade for months.

In accordance with estimates compiled by FactSet-owned Street Account, analysts had been expecting Tesla to report deliveries of 364,660 cars for the period ending September 30, 2022.

But last weekend, Tesla reported deliveries of 343,000 total, and production of 365,000 electric cars — despite having began production at two recent factories in Brandenburg, Germany, and Austin, Texas.

Analysts wondered if Tesla now faces demand erosion in China, where it’s facing the steepest competition from BYD, the Warren Buffet-backed lithium ion battery and electric vehicle maker.

Tesla also held an engineer recruiting event late on Friday last week during which it trotted out a rough, early prototype of a humanoid robot and talked about remaining challenges and progress in developing self-driving technology that may turn its cars into robotaxis with a software update.

On Monday, Musk posted a Twitter poll gauging support for what he claimed was a probable consequence of the seven-month conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

He suggested recent UN-supervised votes in Ukraine on whether certain divisions of the democratic nation under siege should join Russia. He also suggested Ukraine should cede Crimea to Russia, and that the nation should then remain “neutral” slightly than aligning with either NATO or Russia.

The Kremlin praised Musk, but he drew sharp criticism from many others including Ukraine President Zelenskyy, Ukraine ambassador to Germany Andrij Melnyk, South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham and anti-Putin human rights activist and former chess champion Garry Kasparov.

Kasparov, who sought to dam Putin’s rise to power and was jailed and beaten for his activism before fleeing the country, described Musk’s plan as a “repetition of Kremlin propaganda.”

While Musk originally agreed to purchase Twitter in April 2022, he spent months after that accusing the corporate of lying about its user metrics in financial filings, while fighting in court to get out of the deal he proposed.

Twitter had sued Musk to be certain that the deal would go ahead as promised, seeing a windfall for its shareholders. Facing a deposition this week, and with a trial start-date looming, Musk sent a letter to Twitter and the court this week saying he would take the corporate private at $54.20 per share in spite of everything. He wanted Twitter, or the court, to remain the litigation, and a judge gave him until October twenty eighth to wrap up the deal or proceed to trial.

Despite his volatile week, Musk no less than notched a historic skilled achievement at his re-usable rocket enterprise, SpaceX. The corporate launched 4 people to the International Space Station from Cape Canaveral, Florida on Wednesday.

Musk also boasted concerning the start of production of the years-delayed Tesla Semi, a heavy-duty all-electric truck, and promised that the corporate would deliver among the trucks to Pepsi by Dec. 1.