Elon Musk’s choice of a new CEO for Twitter could remove a major distraction for the billionaire and allow him to focus more on Tesla, which has been struggling with a drop in demand for its electric vehicles, analysts said.
Shares of the world’s most valuable electric vehicle maker, which are up 40 percent this year, rose about 2 percent on Friday before the IPO. The stock had its worst year in 2022, losing 65 percent while Musk kept making offers for Twitter.
Ever since Musk bought Twitter in a $44 billion deal (nearly Rs.3.61,490 crore), Tesla investors have feared he may no longer be able to focus fully on the company, which is caught in a price war with upstarts and Contaminated sites located car manufacturers.
“This is a positive for Tesla shareholders as he is likely to spend some more time with Tesla,” said Gene Munster, managing partner at Deepwater Asset Management. “However, there are other things vying for his time.”
Musk said Thursday he had found a new CEO for Twitter, without naming the person. The Wall Street Journal reported that Linda Yaccarino, chief executive of Comcast NBCUniversal, has been in talks about being at the top of the social media platform.
The billionaire said he will take on the role of chief technology officer at Twitter.
“Tesla investors are also likely to celebrate the move, as Musk’s very hands-on approach has led to concerns on Twitter that he’s lost track of this electronics giant,” said Sophie Lund-Yates, an analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown.
Although Twitter has taken a lot of time from Musk since his acquisition, he still actively runs several other companies such as SpaceX and Neuralink. Musk recently founded an AI company called TruthGPT to take on OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Alphabet’s Bard.
Musk’s involvement with Twitter has been pretty messy. He has cut thousands of jobs at the social media company, fired its top leadership team, including its CEO, and made many changes to its policies and strategies to rely less on advertising and more on subscription monies.
© Thomson Reuters 2023
