Tesla shares fell as much as 4.6% in late morning trading on Friday. (File)
Does Tesla Inc. the potential to become a $ 1 trillion company? It’s an idea Elon Musk tweeted early on Friday, only for the billionaire to do something pretty rare for him: delete a post.
The exchange began with a tweet from an account that regularly includes promotional messages about Tesla and “Full Self-Driving,” a package the company sells along with its Autopilot driver assistance system. The set of features often referred to as FSD is controversial due to Tesla’s mixed coverage – the company is telling drivers using it to be fully vigilant.
“FSD is the greatest ever,” wrote the user @WholeMarsBlog. “Tesla is getting bigger than Apple.”
I think there is a> 0% chance that Tesla could be the largest company
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 26, 2021
Musk, Tesla’s CEO, replied that he believes there is “a> 0% chance that Tesla could be the largest company.” After another user wrote that they loved “the direction of that arrow,” Musk replied, “Probably in a few months.”
Musk then quickly deleted the last message. It’s unclear if he thought better of sending it or if he was asked to delete the tweet.
Tesla shares fell as much as 4.6% in late morning trading on Friday. The stock fell 3.7% from 12:55 pm in New York.
As part of a settlement reached in 2018 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission regarding Musk’s tweets about taking the company private, Tesla agreed to hire a securities attorney to review the social media posts of Review executives and ensure compliance with disclosure policies and procedures. Tesla also agreed to supervise Musk’s communications, in particular, and to pre-approve anything containing information material to the company or shareholders.
Hours before Friday’s exchange, the National Labor Relations Board ruled that Tesla had repeatedly violated US labor law and had to force Musk to remove a tweet threatening to punish workers if they joined a union. He has not yet deposited that mail.
With a market cap of approximately $ 600 billion, Tesla still has a long way to go to find Apple Inc. as the world’s largest company. The iPhone maker’s market value is approximately $ 2 trillion.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV personnel and has been published from a syndicated feed.)