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Tesla CEO Elon Musk and design leader Franz von Holzhausen show their latest Cybertruck design at a factory grand opening in Austin, Texas.

Source: Tesla

Shares of electric automaker Tesla fell by more than 7% on Thursday, after investors soured on initially positive results due to imprecise commentary from CEO Elon Musk and other executives on the company’s latest vehicle, Cybertruck, and a planned robotaxi-ready car.

If it holds, it’ll be the worst day for Tesla stock in three months.

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Analysts take Tesla results in stride, but margin concerns remain

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Musk also cautioned that while the company would “continue to target 1.8 million vehicle deliveries this year,” Tesla also expected that “Q3 production will be a little bit down because we’ve got summer shutdowns” for what the CEO described as “a lot of factory upgrades.

Analysts also highlighted concerns with Tesla’s margin “headwinds,” which at 9.6% was the lowest result for at least the last five quarters.

“We believe there could continue to be margin headwinds in the intermediate term if Tesla lowers prices to support higher volumes,” Goldman Sachs’ Mark Delaney said in a Wednesday note

Tesla stock has recovered slightly off of its overnight lows but remains depressed compared to Wednesday’s closing price of $291.26. Tesla beat on the top and bottom lines, reporting revenue of $24.93 billion and earnings of 91 cents per share, adjusted, for the quarter ending June 30, 2023.

Early this month, Tesla reported 466,140 total vehicle deliveries for the second quarter, the closest approximation of sales that Tesla reports. But Musk didn’t offer precise delivery volumes for the new Cybertruck, only saying on the company’s earning call that the Cybertruck would be produced in “in high volume next year,” with an unknown quantity being delivered in 2023.

Cybertruck “factory tooling” is on track but the company is only producing “release candidate” builds, the company said in its earnings presentation.

— CNBC’s Lora Kolodny and Michael Bloom contributed to this report.

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Online trading platform Webull soars 375% in second day on market after SPAC merger

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Online trading platform Webull soars 375% in second day on market after SPAC merger

Anthony Denier, CEO fo Webull, speaks during an interview on CNBC on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., June 1, 2022. 

Brendan McDermid | Reuters

Shares of Webull soared nearly 375% on Monday, the second day on the market for the stock-trading app, which completed its merger last week with SK Growth Opportunities Corp., a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC).

The rally gives Webull a market cap of almost $30 billion.

Webull competes with Robinhood, Charles Schwab and E-Trade. The app lets investors buy and sell shares and options in individual securities, exchange-traded funds and cryptocurrencies, and offers charts, watchlists, screening tools and paper trading.

The company says it has over 23 million registered users and operates in 15 regions globally. In addition to charging fees on trades, Webull has a premium tier with real-time data that costs $40 per year.

In an investor presentation last month, the company said it was expecting $390.2 million in 2024 revenue, which would be roughly flat from 2023.

Former Alibaba and Xiaomi manager Wang Anquan founded Webull in 2016, and he remains the company’s global CEO. Investors include Coatue, General Atlantic and Lightspeed. The app gained popularity during the Covid pandemic, as U.S. citizens used stimulus checks to invest, Anthony Denier, the company’s group president and U.S. CEO, told CNBC in 2021. Webull users are “much more intellectual” than Robinhood’s, Denier has said.

In November, the U.S. House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party sent a letter to Denier inquiring about the company’s ties to China. The company didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The rise of blank-check companies such as SK Growth Opportunities peaked in 2021, with 613 IPOs completed, according to SPAC Insider. The market fell apart the following year as soaring inflation and rising interest rates pushed investors out of risky assets. So far this year there have been 23 SPAC IPOs.

Webull said last year that it was planning for its market debut to take place in the second half of 2024.

WATCH: House Committee slams Webull over alleged ties to Chinese Communist Party

House Committee slams Webull over alleged ties to Chinese Communist Party

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Apple regains $3 trillion market cap after Trump exempts tariffs on iPhones

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Apple regains  trillion market cap after Trump exempts tariffs on iPhones

Apple CEO Tim Cook greets former President Barack Obama at the inauguration of U.S. President Donald Trump at the U.S. Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 20, 2025.

Julia Demaree Nikhinson | Getty Images

Apple shares rose more than 2% on Monday, pushing the company’s market cap back above $3 trillion, as Wall Street expressed some level of relief that the iPhone maker will be able to withstand President Donald Trump’s widespread tariffs.

Late Friday, the Trump administration announced that phones, computers and chips were exempted from new tariffs. Apple is among the most exposed companies to Trump’s tariffs because the majority of its iPhones, iPads and MacBooks are manufactured in China and other Asian countries. Trump has called for Apple to make its products in the U.S.

Most of Apple’s critical imports were exempted from the tariffs, a move that Wall Street analysts said could save Apple billions in costs. However, administration officials warned over the weekend that the exemptions were temporary and could change over the coming weeks.

“I speak to Tim Cook. I helped Tim Cook, recently, and that whole business,” Trump said Monday in a briefing with reporters in the Oval Office, referring to Apple’s CEO. “I don’t want to hurt anybody, but the end result is we’re going to get to the position of greatness for our country.”

Uncertainty about what the future holds helps explain Apple’s relatively muted gain on Friday. The stock is still down almost 9% in April after falling more than 8% in March. The 11% drop in the first quarter marked Apple’s worst performance since 2023.

Apple is the most valuable publicly traded U.S. company once again, edging out Microsoft.

Apple fell below the $3 trillion mark on April 4, two days after Trump announced “reciprocal tariffs” that would place significant duties on China and countries where the company does manufacturing.

The stock rallied last week after Trump announced his administration was dropping new tariff rates to 10% on imports from countries other than China, which would face tariffs as high as 145%.

Analysts at Morgan Stanley wrote in a note Monday that the latest news from the White House brings Apple’s “annualized tariff cost burden” to $7 billion, down from $44 billion as of Thursday.

WATCH: Having exposure to Apple is important

Having exposure to Apple is important, says Bokeh’s Kim Forrest

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Meta resorted to ‘buy-or-bury scheme’ with Instagram and WhatsApp deals, former FTC Chair Lina Khan says

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Meta resorted to 'buy-or-bury scheme' with Instagram and WhatsApp deals, former FTC Chair Lina Khan says

Watch CNBC's full interview with former FTC Chair Lina Khan

Former U.S. Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan said Monday that Facebook “panicked” when making the acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp as smartphone use took off.

“It saw companies like Instagram and WhatsApp experiencing astronomical growth, and that’s the point at which it resorted to this buy-or-bury scheme where, if it couldn’t outcompete a rival, it either bought them out or cut them off its network,” Khan said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, begins a trial with the FTC on Monday. The government alleges that the company monopolized the personal social networking market with its $1 billion acquisition of Instagram in 2012 and $19 billion purchase of WhatsApp in 2014.

Meta did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

The trial could result in the social media giant divesting the two companies. Meta has filed a pretrial brief detailing its disagreement with the FTC and reiterating that it believes the company does not have a monopoly.

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“There’s no expiration date when it comes to the illegality of the transaction,” Khan said. “I think there is a way in which the entire social networking ecosystem looks different today because Facebook was permitted to go out and make these acquisitions.”

The case is, at its core, about “free and fair trade,” Khan added. Though no settlement has been reached, she said there’s always a possibility of a settlement before the case concludes.

With President Donald Trump regularly holding court with tech executives, Khan said she’s “glad” that Meta and CEO Mark Zuckerberg‘s efforts to dismiss the case have been, thus far, unsuccessful.

Zuckerberg donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund, co-hosted an inaugural ball and has reportedly met with the president multiple times since January.

“Until the trial is over and until we actually get a liability verdict and then a remedy, we’re all going to have to wait and see,” Khan said.

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