Fresh off of boasting to investors that Tesla was on course to reach half a trillion dollars in market value, Elon Musk is facing a massive drop in the company’s share price.

Tesla has been in the news for all the wrong reasons lately, from exploding cars to a series of videos showing people misusing their self-driving cars.

Elon, on the other hand, seems to have been dedicating his time to trolling Jeff Bezos, recording rap-tracks and chatting to The Rock on Twitter.

Now analysts are raising concerns in notes to Tesla investors, reports the Sydney Morning Herald.

Tesla’s share price has dropped about 19.5 per cent, vapourising $US8.8 billion ($12.8 billion) in market value. The remaining $US36 billion market capitalisation is 7 per cent of what Musk is telling the world Tesla will be worth.

Last Friday, Tesla’s share price dropped below $US200 a share for the first time since December 2016. The share price has recovered somewhat this week, to be trading about $US205 on Tuesday.

Tesla’s financial situation has deteriorated rapidly since 2018 when they experienced two profitable quarters that looked like they might turn things around. The best that they can hope for now is that sales pick up in the latter half of the year.

It doesn’t help that Musk has failed to hire a chief operating officer, although he has hired someone new to run Tesla’s social media.

His qualifications? He posted a picture of sheep once that went viral.

Here’s The Guardian:

Elon Musk has reportedly hired the man responsible for a viral tweet about a giant sheep to be Tesla’s social media manager.

Adam Koszary, programme manager for the UK’s Reading Museum and Museum of English Rural Life (@TheMERL), run by the University of Reading, will join Tesla in July, according to his Twitter account.

The @TheMerl account went viral in April last year when it tweeted an old picture of a large ram with the caption: “Look at this absolute unit.” The tweet has now been retweeted more than 31,000 times and has over 111,000 likes.

Elon liked the tweet so much that he changed his Twitter bio to “absolute unit” and his picture to that of the sheep. @TheMerl responded by changing their profile picture to one of Musk.

Musk then tweeted the most accurate thing he’s ever put out on Twitter:

Musk has a dodgy history with Twitter, and is now not allowed to post anything unless it’s been approved by a lawyer.

We can’t confirm that the new social media manager at Tesla was hired because of his “sheep tweet”, but it wouldn’t be out of character for Musk.

[sources:sundayherald&guardian]