Benzinga - by Aaron Bry, Benzinga Editor.
Basically: Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) and owner of X.com, previously Twitter, held the title of richest person in the world when Tesla's stock was at all-time highs. Musk, whose net worth is primarily tied to Tesla's stock price, owns more than 400 million shares of Tesla according to regulatory filings.
This means that when Tesla's share price peaked in late 2021 around $400 a share (split-adjusted), Musk was worth more than $300 billion according to Forbes, making him far and away the richest person in the world. But, Tesla's stock decline caused Musk's net worth to retreat by more than $200 billion at one point, making him the first person to lose such a large sum of money, according to Bloomberg.
On Tuesday, Musk tweeted his endorsement of ARK Invest’s analysis regarding Tesla’s Q1 expectations, describing it as “Accurate” in response to Tasha Keeney‘s interview on CNBC's Last Call.
Keeney, ARK Invest's director of Investment Analysis & Institutional Strategies, emphasized the long-term viability of electric vehicles and Tesla’s competitive pricing, predicting it will be difficult for competitors to match.
Musk’s Losses: Even the Guinness World Records recognized Musk for losing more money than any other person in history, thanks to Tesla's stock bouncing back, Musk remains among the top-five richest people in the world, according to Forbes' Billionaires List.
To put Musk's loss in net worth into perspective, the drop of $200 billion is equivalent to about the entire market cap of companies like Adobe Inc, Walt Disney Co, Wells Fargo & Co and others.
But, Tesla’s latest stock slump caused Musk to once again lost tens of billions of dollars, causing him to slide down the Forbes list. Tesla’s earnings report, due after the close Tuesday, could help determine whether Musk shoots higher up the list or continues to fall through the ranks.
The Top Dog: The list currently has Musk ranked third, behind LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault, who is estimated to be worth about $215 billion. Arnault founded the European luxury fashion conglomerate in the 1980s, and the company is now worth nearly half of a trillion dollars.
Second on the list is Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon. Bezos stepped down as the CEO of Amazon and turned the reigns over to Andy Jassy, but Bezos still has nearly 1 billion shares of Amazon.
Mark Zuckerberg is listed behind Musk at number four on the list, with an estimated net worth of around $174 billion, just a few billion behind Musk's $178 billion. Zuckerberg recently passed Musk on the list, but has since fallen back due to a pullback in Meta Platform's (NASDAQ:META) share price.
Meta Platforms Inc is set to announce its first-quarter financial results after market close on Wednesday, with analysts anticipating revenues of $36.16 billion. This follows a revenue of $28.65 billion in the same quarter last year, and Meta has surpassed revenue estimates for six consecutive quarters, forecasting revenues between $34.5 billion and $37.0 billion for this period.
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