LONDON: Tesla shares fell nearly 4 percent on Monday as a $113 cut in JPMorgan Chase’s price target for the electric carmaker added to growing doubts among market players about a plan to take the company private.
Slashing its price target for Tesla from $308 to $195, the brokerage said it did not believe Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk had funds for a plan announced by a tweet that said “funding secured” two weeks ago.
Analysts from the US bank had upped its forecast from $198 to $308 after a roughly $100 surge in Tesla stock following Musk’s tweets on Aug. 7 and the note on Monday was the latest evidence of skepticism about the deal on Wall Street.
People familiar with the matter said on Sunday that PIF, the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund that Musk says had been pressing to help fund the buyout, is in talks to invest in aspiring Tesla rival Lucid Motors Inc.
“Our interpretation of subsequent events leads us to believe that funding was not secured for a going private transaction, nor was there any formal proposal,” JPMorgan analyst Ryan Brinkman wrote in a client note.
“Tesla does appear to be exploring a going private transaction, but we now believe that such a process appears much less developed than we had earlier presumed, suggesting formal incorporation into our valuation analysis seems premature at this time,” Brinkman said.
JPM now targets the stock, which it continues to value at underweight, back at $195, versus Friday’s close of $305.50. The median price target of the Wall Street analysts covering Tesla is $336.
Tesla shares touched a three-month low of $285 in premarket trading before recovering to trade around $290, reducing its market value back below that of General Motors as the biggest US carmaker.
An interview with the New York Times, in which Musk said he was under major emotional stress in the “most difficult year” of his life, on Friday added to investors’ concerns over his leadership after a series of social media spats.
A person with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters last week that the SEC has opened an inquiry related to Musk’s tweets on the buyout and the billionaire is also facing a class action suite from investors who lost money in the share moves.
“The lack of process to (Musk’s) announcement has now caused governance and competency concerns which are starting to snowball,” said Tigress Financial Partners analyst Ivan Feinseth.
Tesla nears 3-month low as JPMorgan adds to private deal doubts
Tesla nears 3-month low as JPMorgan adds to private deal doubts
- Slashing its price target for Tesla from $308 to $195, the brokerage said it did not believe Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk had funds for a plan
- Tesla shares fell nearly 4 percent
Closing Bell: Saudi main index closes in red at 11,183
RIYADH: Saudi Arabia’s Tadawul All Share Index dipped on Monday, losing 44.79 points, or 0.4 percent, to close at 11,183.85.
The total trading turnover of the benchmark index was SR4.05 billion ($1.08 billion), as 69 of the listed stocks advanced, while 191 retreated.
The MSCI Tadawul Index decreased, down 6.63 points or 0.44 percent, to close at 1,504.73.
The Kingdom’s parallel market Nomu lost 328.20 points, or 1.36 percent, to close at 23,764.92. This comes as 22 of the listed stocks advanced, while 49 retreated.
The best-performing stock was Maharah Human Resources Co., with its share price surging by 7.26 percent to SR6.50.
Other top performers included Arabian Cement Co., which saw its share price rise by 6.27 percent to SR22.71, and Saudi Research and Media Group, which saw a 4.3 percent increase to SR104.30.
On the downside, the worst performer of the day was Arabian Internet and Communications Services Co., whose share price fell by 8.01 percent to SR207.80.
Jahez International Co. for Information System Technology and Al-Rajhi Co. for Cooperative Insurance also saw declines, with their shares dropping by 5.61 percent and 4.46 percent to SR12.79 and SR75, respectively.
On the announcement front, Etihad Etisalat Co. announced its financial results for 2025 with a 7.9 percent year-on-year growth in its revenues, to reach SR19.6 billion.
In a Tadawul statement, Mobily said that this growth is attributed to “the expansion of all revenue streams, with a healthy growth in the overall subscriber base.”
Mobily delivered an 11.6 percent increase in net profit, reaching SR3.4 billion in 2025 compared to SR3.1 billion in 2024.
The company’s share price reached SR67.85, marking a 0.37 percent increase on the main market.
