Tesla remains the most popular stock with Kiwi investors using factional ownership platforms to play US markets. Photo / 123RF
Tesla remains the most popular stock with Kiwi investors using factional ownership platforms to play US markets. Photo / 123RF
Tesla has made it clear it’s focusing on market share gains over profit.
But some Kiwi investors have begun to have qualms over the strategy, which undermined margins with the carmaker’s latest result.
Sharesies says while Tesla is still the most popular offshore stock, there was net selling after yesterday’snumbers.
On Wednesday (Thursday NZT), the EV maker revealed first-quarter earnings that had been dented by price cuts.
Net profit fell 22 per cent from the year-ago quarter to US$2.5 billion. Revenue grew 25 per cent to US$23.3b, but was still shy of analysts’ consensus expectation of US$23.6b.
Undaunted, CEO Elon Musk announced a sixth round of price cuts - the firm has already lowered prices between 14 per cent and 25 per cent across its range this year as it contends with higher interest rates and growing competition. Musk also indicated more cuts were on the way, in the US and abroad, to stoke demand.
The chief executive said Tesla was on track to sell 1.8 million vehicles per year, which would equate to 27 per cent growth. The company had been aiming for 50 per cent growth as part of its drive to sell 20 million cars annually by 2030.
Musk brushed off the profit fall, saying Tesla still had the highest operating margins of any automaker.
Investors were dubious however, and shares fell 9.75 per cent to US$162.99 in Thursday (Friday NZT) trading as Tesla’s rollercoaster Nasdaq ride continued (the stock peaked at US$407.36 in November 2021 and had fallen to US$113.06 before staging something of a recovery).
It did not help that another Musk company, SpaceX, pulled at the entrepreneur’s attention, as its new Starship rocket exploded just minutes into its maiden flight. And a third Musk venture, Twitter, provoked a furor after it removed a portion of its hateful conduct policy that included specific protections for transgender people (further annoying the liberals who form the biggest block of EV buyers) and blue verification ticks (after several deadlines) were removed for all-comers who refused to pay a subscription.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk in March 2022. Photo / Getty Images
Tesla remains the most popular stock with Kiwi investors using factional ownership platforms to play US markets, but some did bail after the first-quarter numbers.
“Tesla is the largest offshore holding by value on Sharesies and one of the most popular offshore by number of holders, alongside the likes of Rocket Lab, Microsoft and Apple,” Sharesies co-CEO Leighton Roberts told the Herald.
More than 50,000 Sharesies investors own Tesla shares.
“In the week leading up to the results announcement, we saw signs of investor excitement, with Tesla being our most traded stock,” Roberts said.
“However, we expect to see a majority of Sharesies holders riding the dip, as they’ve typically done in the past.”
At Stake, where Tesla was the second-most-bought individual stock in the build-up to the first-quarter result (after Coinbase) - and where enthusiasm to buy on the dip.
“Today, there was a 281 per cent increase in the value of inflows into Tesla when compared to yesterday, yet an 80 per cent decrease in the value of outflows over the same time period,” Stake analyst Megan Stals said.
“There was a buy-to-sell ratio, in value terms, of 6:1.”
Top of the fractional-ownership pops
The five most widely held stocks by Sharesies members (excluding funds).
