Billionaire and “free speech” activist Elon Musk is having a rough week. He lost more than $10 billion of his fortune following the SpaceX rocket exploding in space and Tesla earnings coming in below expectations.
The news comes courtesy of Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index, which keeps an eye on billionaires’ bank accounts, because that’s what’s important these days. Musk lost about $12.6 billion after Tesla shares nosedived almost 10% following a less than stellar quarterly earnings report.
This wiped $58 billion from the company’s market cap. A billion is $100 million! It’s hard to put these numbers into real life terms because… that’s so much money! Tesla saw a year-on-year decline of almost 25% of its net income. That’s $2.51 billion for those keeping score at home.
There were also fears that Musk would continue to drop prices for Teslas in order to bump demand, despite the already razor-thin profit margins. There have been about six Tesla price cuts this year, although the company recently upped prices. It raised prices on both its Model X and S vehicles with $2,500 bumps. To compensate, the company’s offering three years of unlimited supercharging with purchase, until June 30 of this year.
This brings us to the other half of Musk’s terrible no good week: the rocket explosion. The SpaceX rocket blew up just a few minutes after it had its first flight, affecting future costs and confidence in the venture. Musk said the company “learned a lot” from the explosion.
SpaceX has a valuation of $137 billion and Tesla shares have gone up more than 4,000% over the life of the company. Bloomberg reported Musk’s net worth a year ago at $260 billion, and now it’s around $164 billion. Pour one out for the billionaire.