Tesla (TSLA) stock ticked higher on Friday after Elon Musk announced he had hired a new CEO for Twitter without naming the person.
“Excited to announce that I’ve hired a new CEO for X/Twitter,” Musk, the current CEO of Twitter, said in a tweet. “She will be starting in ~6 weeks!”
Musk’s role will “transition to being exec chair & CTO, overseeing product, software & sysops,” he wrote.
The tweet sent Tesla stock 2% higher just before the market closed on Thursday. Shares of Tesla popped more than 2% on Friday morning too, despite a wide-ranging recall in China due to a braking and acceleration defect.
Musk first made his bid for Twitter on April 14, 2022. Tesla shares closed the day at $333. Since then, the stock has lost nearly half of its value as Musk has sold off shares to pay for his new social media platform. The official $44 billion purchase closed in October, and Wall Street has been hyperfocused on the “Twitter overhang” weighing down Tesla’s stock since.
“Musk’s reign as CEO of Twitter has finally come to an end and thus will be a positive for Tesla’s stock starting to finally remove this lingering albatross from the story,” Wedbush securities managing director Dan Ives wrote in a note to clients on Friday morning. “We believe this adds roughly $15 per share to the Tesla story as the Musk CEO overhang is now gone for Twitter.”
Musk hasn’t officially named a new CEO, though multiple outlets have reported NBCUniversal’s head of advertising Linda Yaccarino is “in talks” for the job. NBCUniversal said in a statement Friday that Yaccarino is leaving the company, effective immediately.
Once he has stepped down from Twitter, Musk will still be the CEO of both SpaceX and Tesla.
It will come at crucial moment for the electric vehicle maker, as the China recall, dwindling U.S. demand and an EV pricing war pressure the stock.
Tesla shares fell as much as 20% in the last month after the company reported worse-than-expected gross margins in the first quarter.
Musk didn’t help cases on the earnings call, either.
“It’s difficult to say what the margin will be,” Musk told investors when asked how low margins will get as the company continues to cut prices.
Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, May 16.
Josh is a reporter for Yahoo Finance.
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Source: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tesla-stock-pops-after-musk-picks-new-twitter-ceo-131941475.html