Business

Tesla’s four-day stock slide ends after early morning sell-off

Tesla shares ended their four-day, $8 billion skid on Monday, despite more uncertainty over Chief Executive Elon Musk’s proposed move to take the company private.

Shares of the electric car maker fell nearly 7 percent early on — rocked by a JPMorgan Chase analyst cutting the price target of the stock and by a report over the weekend that the Saudi fund Musk said had promised would support a $420 a share take-private move is eyeing a $1 billion investment in a Tesla rival.

Ryan Brinkman slashed his price target for Tesla to $195 from $308, saying he did not believe Musk had the funding for a plan announced by tweet on Aug. 7.

The price target cut followed an increase in the price target, to $308 from $198, immediately following the tweet.

Brinkman now believes such a move is a long way from completion.

“Tesla does appear to be exploring a going private transaction, but we now believe that such a process appears much less developed than we had earlier presumed,” Brinkman wrote in a note.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia’s sovereign fund is in talks to invest in aspiring Tesla rival Lucid Motors, according to Reuters.

At the same time, some Tesla suppliers are worried about getting paid, it was reported. In all, 18 of 22 suppliers in a survey view Tesla as a “financial risk” to their companies, according to The Wall Street Journal.

A number of smaller suppliers have claimed that Tesla has failed to pay them, while others said that Musk’s company has tried to stretch out payments, according to the report.

A Tesla executive told the Journal that the company’s relationship with its suppliers are good.

After the early morning sell-off, Tesla investors shook off concerns, and the stock rallied the rest of the trading day — closing up 1 percent, at $308.44.