Tesla (TSLA) shares pushed higher in late-afternoon trading on Tuesday, following an early bump on Monday that fizzled into the trading session yesterday. Tesla CEO Elon Musk is driving the news.
Over the weekend, Musk endorsed former President Donald Trump following a failed assassination attempt at a campaign rally. Musk’s closeness to Trump is seen as a positive for Tesla, despite Trump’s disdain for EVs and desire to roll back EV tax credits implemented under President Biden. Despite this, the Wall Street Journal reported Musk will commit a massive $45 million a month to a pro-Trump Super PAC, further cementing his commitment to a second Trump term (though Musk indicated in a tweet that the report was false).
Musk isn’t the only billionaire outwardly supporting Trump, but government policies associated with Trump’s potential return to the White House would have significant ramifications for Tesla.
Tesla shares closed up 1.6% on Tuesday.
Another bit of news with significant implications for Tesla is the automaker’s future with robotaxis. Musk all but confirmed late Monday that Tesla would be delaying its robotaxi reveal, which was slated for Aug. 8.
“Requested what I think is an important design change to the front, and extra time allows us to show off a few other things,” Musk tweeted in reply to a post regarding changes and a delay to Tesla’s robotaxi.
Tesla stock is still nearly flat for the year despite a steep early-year sell-off as the enthusiasm behind Tesla’s robotaxi, shareholder approval of Musk’s controversial pay package, and new growth in Tesla’s energy business sent Tesla stock on a steep rise — nearly 30% in the past month.
It was that move that led to UBS downgrading the stock at the end of the week last week.
“TSLA has always traded with a premium attached to it for other, future growth initiatives. However, at current levels, we believe that unidentifiable premium is too significant,” UBS analyst Joseph Spak wrote in a note to clients.
However, analysts at Mizuho and Citi bumped their price targets up for Tesla and reiterated their Neutral ratings, forced to play catch-up on Tesla’s stock move.
Finally, a new piece of bullish news for Tesla crossed on early Tuesday as Bloomberg reported the automaker had posted nearly 800 openings for new positions, from service jobs to postings for engineers in the robotaxi and Optimus robot divisions.
In April Musk had emailed Tesla staff confirming a "more than 10%" headcount reduction following prior reports that layoffs could hit as much as 20% of staff. Following Musk’s layoff confirmation, Wedbush’s Dan Ives said the cuts were an “unfortunately necessary move for Tesla to cut costs with a softer growth outlook.”
While 800 new job postings pale in comparison to the thousands that were likely laid off back in the spring, fresh hiring may indicate that Tesla sees better times ahead from a financial perspective.
Pras Subramanian is a reporter for Yahoo Finance covering the auto industry. You can follow him on Twitter and on Instagram.
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