Tesla Stock – Volkswagen CEO Joins Twitter to Tackle Tesla’s Elon Musk
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Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess joined Twitter Wednesday.
Sean Gallup/Getty Photographs)
Volkswagen
is the biggest automobile maker on this planet primarily based on the variety of automobiles offered, however is just worth a fraction of
Tesla
primarily based on market capitalization. Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess needs to alter that. Now he’s on Twitter, prepared to fulfill Tesla CEO Elon Musk on his personal phrases.
Diess despatched out his first tweet Wednesday, telling Musk that Volkswagen (ticker: VOW.Germany) was out for Telsa’s ((TSLA)) electric-vehicle market share. The responses got here quick and livid for the Volkswagen CEO, who has amassed about 10,000 followers on
Twitter
(TWTR). Musk has about 43 million followers. Twitter customers argued over market share and electric-vehicle capability. One Wall Street analyst, and Tesla bear, Gordon Johnson posed questions on to Diess.
Posts on Twitter have moved Tesla stock up to now, like when Musk tweeted shares of his firm have been “too high.” That was when Tesla stock was about $140. Shares are buying and selling at about $850 in the present day.
Tesla is the biggest battery electric-vehicle maker on this planet and worth roughly $800 billion primarily based on 950 million shares excellent, or $1 trillion primarily based on about 1.2 billion totally diluted shares excellent. The totally diluted determine provides within the influence of administration stock choices and warrants.
Volkswagen has a market value of roughly one-tenth of Telsa. It, nonetheless, has the higher hand on gross sales, delivery greater than 9 million autos over the previous yr. This previous yr was robust for many auto makers. Volkswagen shipped nearly 11 million automobiles in 2019. Tesla nonetheless managed to develop by means of the pandemic, delivery about 500,000 autos in 2020, up from 368,000 in 2019.
Volkswagen needs to catch up within the electric-vehicle race. The corporate has essentially the most formidable targets for electrical autos of any conventional auto maker. Volkswagen says it’s planning to spend about $85 billion over the following 5 years on automobile electrification and digital applied sciences. Nearly half of that spending can be on battery electrical autos. By 2029, Volkswagen plans to have introduced 75 totally electrical models and 60 hybrid models to the market. The corporate needs to have 20% to 25% of whole gross sales from battery electrical autos by 2030.
Tesla stock wasn’t doing a lot in Thursday buying and selling. The
S&P 500
was successfully flat. Volkswagen shares have been up about 1.6% in abroad buying and selling after gaining 3.5% Wednesday. Many conventional auto maker stocks have been rallying too.
General Motors
(GM) stock, as an illustration, is up 16% over the previous 5 days.
Ford Motor
(F) stock is up 18%. Each American auto makers have gotten a lift from outdoors capital flowing into their autonomous driving and electrical automobile investments.
Possibly buyers are reconsidering the flexibility of auto makers to compete with Tesla within the market—if not on Twitter.
Write to Al Root at allen.root@dowjones.com
