(CNN) — Bloomberg News said last week that billionaire Elon Musk became the first person to lose $200 billion of his wealth in history.
She added that, according to the “Bloomberg” Billionaires Index, Musk’s wealth, CEO of “Tesla”, “SpaceX” and “Twitter”, amounted to $ 137 billion, and he is ranked second in the list of the richest people in the world behind Bernard Arnault, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the company. LVMH.
The agency pointed out that Elon Musk’s wealth was $ 340 billion in November 2021, and that “Tesla” was acquiring the bulk of the wealth, but after the company’s share fell by 65% in 2022, the demand for it weakened due to the intensification of competition in cars. Electric among well-known automakers last year, Tesla failed to meet growth targets and cut production in China, and announced, on Monday, car deliveries in the fourth quarter of last year, below Wall Street estimates.
Evidence of diminishing car buyer interest in Tesla became evident last month after the company announced a rare sale in an effort to clear its inventory of cars.
The company offered two discounts to buyers who receive a car before the end of the year, as it initially provided a discount of $3,750, then doubled the discount to $7,500 with two weeks remaining in 2022, but this caused a shake-up of investor confidence in the company, which led to a drop in its share by 37 percent. % in December.
Critics have long questioned whether Tesla is worth the $1 trillion it had at the start of 2022.
Tesla was worth, at the peak of its success, more than 12 of the largest automakers combined, despite owning a fraction of its sales, but the company ended the year with a value of $386 billion, which is still much greater than the value of its competitors in the industry. Cars, however, are much smaller than the tech giants they were compared to a year ago.
Elon Musk’s $44 billion purchase of Twitter didn’t help Tesla shares or his personal fortune either. Musk, who is Tesla’s largest shareholder, has sold $23 billion worth of shares since announcing his interest in Twitter in April. April.
His constant tweets and increasingly erratic behavior, especially after he took over as CEO, angered Tesla investors who want him to give more attention to his larger and more valuable company.
On the other hand, Musk defended himself against the critics, saying that he had “never missed a big Tesla meeting since he took charge of Twitter.”
Tesla’s stock could bounce back, and Elon Musk could once again become the richest person in the world, but his reputation as a genius suffered some serious damage in 2022 almost as much as his personal fortune.