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Tesla tumbles: Is there more to the story than Twitter distractions?

Shares in electric vehicle maker Tesla sank to a new 52-week low on Tuesday, closing around $138 per share, or 8% lower for the day in an otherwise mixed day for stocks.

CEO Elon Musk tried to blame the sinking price partly on macroeconomic factors.

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Oppenheimer downgrades Tesla, says Elon Musk's handling of Twitter could hurt electric vehicle maker

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Long-time Tesla bull Ross Gerber wrote in a tweet, “Tesla stock price now reflects the value of having no CEO. Great job tesla BOD – Time for a shake up. $tsla.” Gerber has launched an informal campaign to have fellow shareholders vote to appoint him to Tesla’s board of directors.

Musk replied, in a tweet, “As bank savings account interest rates, which are guaranteed, start to approach stock market returns, which are not guaranteed, people will increasingly move their money out of stocks into cash, thus causing stocks to drop.”

Elon Musk speaks during a press conference at SpaceX’s Starbase facility near Boca Chica Village in South Texas on February 10, 2022.

Jim Watson | AFP | Getty Images

But Tesla’s stock has dropped more than other larger automakers since Musk announced his plans to buy Twitter in Apr. 2022. Since that date, Tesla shares are down 59%, versus 26% for Ford and 12% for GM. The S&P 500 is down 14%.

The Tesla chief has a lot of distractions, as Gerber notes: Musk has been stirring controversy as the new owner and CEO of Twitter, the social media giant which he acquired in a leveraged buyout in late October, and is also the CEO of a major defense contractor, SpaceX.

Musk sold billions of dollars of his Tesla holdings to finance the Twitter deal, including a $3.6 billion sale earlier this month.

He told Twitter employees he sold Tesla shares to “save” their business while proceeding to cut more than half of staff at the company and rolling out a host of policy changes, some of which he later reverses.

While Musk has been focused on his new role as “Chief Twit” since late October, Tesla has been offering discounts and incentives to sell cars in China, where it operates a major factory in Shanghai; fighting to make its new factories in Austin, Texas, and Brandenburg, Germany, efficient; and facing persistent supply chain challenges endemic to the auto industry, along with soaring energy prices in Europe which may reduce the appeal of a battery electric vehicle for many drivers.

Those, among other challenges, led Mizuho Securities and Evercore ISI to reduce their Tesla price targets on Tuesday.

Mizuho Securities analysts wrote in a note, that “near-term, we see potential weakness in Tesla sales as macro headwinds and a weaker consumer could drive lower demand for higher-priced EVs.” The firm is still bullish Tesla long-term, citing the company’s new factories as a competitive advantage, and new electric vehicle tax credits on the horizon in the US which could “accelerate demand” domestically. In China, some EV credits are expiring as of the start of 2023. The firm has a price target of $285 and a buy rating on shares of Tesla.

A Vanderbilt University assistant professor, Joshua White, who formerly worked as an economist for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, told CNBC, Only some of the drop in Tesla’s value can be blamed on interest rates. Twitter overhang is one important component. China is another huge component. We still don’t know if China will be open all the way, and we see there is supply and demand pressure here in light of the increase in covid cases, and disruptions.”

He also said Elon Musk may have lost shareholders’ trust when he said in April that he didn’t plan to sell more of his Tesla shares, but went ahead and sold billions of dollars’ more.

“He seems to sell equity in really large blocks, say ‘I’m done and I’m not selling anymore.’ But talk is cheap. He says that and then sells more shares. So the more you say that and investors think he’s probably not done? The less confident they will be that the price is going to bounce back.”

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Spotify restores service after Wednesday outage

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Spotify restores service after Wednesday outage

The Spotify logo is displayed on a screen on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Dec. 4, 2023.

Brendan Mcdermid | Reuters

Spotify was down Wednesday, with about 50,000 reports of an outage on Downdetector.

The company posted an all-clear to social media site X just after noon EDT, thanking listeners for their patience.

“Spotify experienced an outage today beginning around 6:20am EDT. As of 11:45am EDT, Spotify is back up and functioning normally,” the company said in a statement.

The music-streaming giant did not provide additional details about the scope of the outage.

Users peppered the replies to the company’s outage announcement with frustrations and memes.

“I’ll just hum to myself,” wrote user @alexissTyler.

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The company recently reported its first profitable year and said it paid a record $10 billion in royalties to the music industry.

Nearly 1,500 artists generated more than $1 million individually, according to Spotify’s annual Loud and Clear Report, and more than 80% of those in that pool did not have a song reach the app’s Global Daily Top 50 Chart.

The app has added new advertising features in recent months.

Earlier in April, the company released new generative artificial intelligence ads and reported that automated ad channels drove $2 billion in ad spending with digital audio since the beginning of the year.

Out of the company’s 675 million monthly active users, more than half are free users who are served ads when they stream music.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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AMD expects $800 million hit from U.S. chip restrictions on China

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AMD expects 0 million hit from U.S. chip restrictions on China

Lisa Su, CEO of AMD, attends the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit at the Grand Palais in Paris, Feb. 10, 2025.

Benoit Tessier | Reuters

Shares of Advanced Micro Devices slid more than 5% on Wednesday after the company said it could incur charges of up to $800 million for exporting its MI308 products to China and other countries.

“The Company expects to apply for licenses but there is no assurance that licenses will be granted,” AMD said in the filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The new U.S. license requirement, which applies to exports of certain semiconductor products, would hit inventory, purchase commitments and related reserves, AMD said in the filing.

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AMD is one of the companies that builds the hardware behind the artificial intelligence boom. The company claims its AMD Instinct MI300 Series accelerators are “uniquely well-suited to power even the most demanding AI and HPC workloads,” according to its website.

It generated a “record” revenue of $25.8 billion in 2025, according to its February earnings release, but the new export restrictions could slow growth.

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Nvidia, an AMD competitor, released a similar disclosure on Tuesday. The company said it will take a quarterly charge of about $5.5 billion for exporting H20 graphics processing units.

China is Nvidia’s fourth-largest region by sales, after the U.S., Singapore, and Taiwan, according to the company’s annual report. More than half of its sales went to U.S. companies in its fiscal year that ended in January.

–CNBC’s Kif Leswing and Jordan Novet contributed to this report.

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Chip stocks fall as Nvidia, AMD warn of higher costs from China export controls

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Chip stocks fall as Nvidia, AMD warn of higher costs from China export controls

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang delivers the keynote for the Nvidia GPU Technology Conference at the SAP Center in San Jose, California, on March 18, 2025.

Brittany Hosea-small | Reuters

Technology stocks declined Wednesday, led by a 5% drop in Nvidia, as the chipmaking sector signaled that President Donald Trump‘s sweeping tariff plans could hamper demand and growth.

Nvidia revealed in a filing Tuesday that it will take a $5.5 billion charge tied to exporting its H20 graphics processing units to China and other countries and said that the government will require a license to ship the chips there and other destinations.

The chip was designed specifically for China use during President Joe Biden’s administration to meet U.S. export restrictions barring the sale of advanced AI processors, which totaled an estimated $12 billion to $15 billion in revenue in 2024. Advanced Micro Devices said in a filing Wednesday that the latest export controls on its MI308 products could lead to an $800 million hit.

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Chipmaking stocks have struggled in the wake of President Donald Trump’s sweeping U.S. trade restrictions, sparked by fears that higher tariffs will stifle demand.

The disclosures from Nvidia and AMD are the first major signs that Trump’s fierce battle with China could significantly hamper chip growth. The administration has made some exemptions for electronics, including semiconductors, but has warned that separate tariffs could come down the road.

Adding to the sector worries was a disappointing print from Dutch semiconductor equipment maker ASML. The company missed order expectations and said that tariff restrictions create demand uncertainty. Shares fell about 5%.

The VanEck Semiconductor ETF fell more than 4%, with AMD plunging more than 5%. Micron Technology, Marvell Technology and Broadcom sank about 2% each. Equipment makers Applied Materials and Lam Research fell about 3% each.

The declines spilled over into the broader market and tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite, which dropped nearly 2%. Meta Platforms, Alphabet and Tesla lost about 2% each. Amazon, Microsoft and Apple were last down about 1% each.

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