Elon Musk says he´ll dedicate more time to Tesla and his role as ‘First Buddy’ will ‘drop significantly’ starting in May after the company reported a breathtaking downfall in first quarter profits.
The automaker’s first-quarter profits cratered 71 percent, with the EV giant pulling in $409 million compared to $1.4 billion during the same stretch last year.
Wall Street expected better — and investors are clearly growing uneasy with the once-dominant EV brand.
The company’s stock price has shed nearly 40 percent of its value since January (though, it has regained some momentum after the earnings release) when Musk started serving as head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and being spotted everywhere with Donald Trump.
Tesla’s first quarter earnings conference call allowed investors to ask what they wanted of the CEO and it was clear there was only one thing on their minds.
One asked: ‘Can Elon please provide some reassurance that at some point soon he will be done with DOGE and politics? Many Tesla shareholders wish he would reprioritize the majority of his time and effort to engineering.’
‘Starting probably in next month, in May, my time allocation to DOGE will drop significantly,’ Musk said on the call. However, he still plans to put in one to two days per week still helping out with DOGE, he claimed.
But ‘starting next month, I’ll be allocating far more of my time to Tesla.’
Musk admitted that his forays into politics have likely damaged his company for the time being, though he added that the global economy was also to blame.
‘This dynamic, along with changing political sentiment, could have a meaningful impact on demand for our products in the near-term,’ he said.
