The Tesla stock market price sky rocketed at the beginning of 2022 and things were looking good for Elon Musk. He was by far the wealthiest person on Earth. In fact, he was the wealthiest person ever. However, now, as time passes by, Tesla’s stock market price drops steadily but securely resulting in Elon Musk being pushed down on the Forbes list. He is currently in second place.
On Tuesday, the Louis Vuitton group owner Bernard Arnault overtook the lead as the wealthiest person in the world. Bernard Arnault is the chairman and the CEO of Louis Vitton, a company that produces luxury goods, and is a parent company to numerous other luxurious brands such as Dior, Tiffany and Bulgari.
Elon Musk Is No Longer The Richest Person – Lost More Than $150 Billion in 2022
Elon Musk’s net worth dropped significantly and reached a low of $163 billion in Tuesday. Over the years, Elon Musk has been building his net worth mostly around the value of Tesla. When the company got going, gaining popularity, and increasing revenue its stock market price skyrocketed and caused Musk to reach the all-time high of $300 billion. During the Covid pandemic, the automotive company became very profitable. So the months of isolation and struggles did not present such an issue for Elon Musk. He managed to make a giant leap on the wealth list and get from a low place (not even in the first 50 people) to the first place of the list in a reasonably short period.
We need to take into consideration that Elon Musk was worth less than $30 billion in 2020. In the course of the next year and a half he would gain more than $300 billion. That way, in November 2021 he was worth around $335 billion.
The decision that marked Elon Musk’s year in 2022 is the acquisition of Twitter, the social media giant. Seems like the idea for obtaining the company came as a simple joke. However, as the first few months passed Elon Musk went the distance and pledged to buy the company. As we all know he later tried to get out of the deal. He had what is commonly known as the ‘buyer’s remorse’ and tried to reverse the deal. However, he was unable to do so without facing some legal and financial consequences.
In order to buy Twitter, Elon Musk sold a big chunk of Tesla stock. He sold $15 billion worth of Tesla in October, causing a drop of $10 billion on the wealth lists.
Now when he finally has the company, his main goal is to make it profitable. However, since he overpaid dearly for it, he strives to bring the investment back as soon as possible. Firstly, Elon musk started by cutting down the workforce in half. Immediately after stepping into office he fired most of the company’s top executives and announced big layoffs. At the moment, Twitter is working with almost half of the personnel it employed previously. No doubt that this is a significant saving. However, the media and the press attacked Elon Musk for it.
What’s most worrying for Elon Musk is the pulling out of advertisers from the platform. He even acknowledged this himself. The stabilization of Twitter and its advertisers will be a long and painful process.
In a try to generate more revenue, Elon Musk even introduced a $8 surcharge for having a ‘blue checkmark’ on Twitter, symbolizing a verified account. However, critics met this decision with doubts as well. There are visible drawbacks to it. The biggest one is that people are able to verify accounts that do not belong to them. For example, there were cases where people made accounts impersonating celebrities and were able to verify them. Someone even went to an extent to create a ‘fake’ verified account of Musk himself.
Taking into consideration that this period in 2021, Elon Musk had a net worth of about $340 billion, in one year his fortune managed to drop by an astonishing $170$ billion.
However, things were not so bad for the luxury brand Louis Vitton. Bernard Arnault’s brand stock market price managed to drop by only 9%. Taking into consideration the happenings in the world in 2022 having this drop rate is a major success.
One explanation for the steady stock market price is that after the Covid-19 pandemic, the demand for Arnault’s brands peaked. People were able to go old-fashion shopping after almost 2 years. By the looks of it, Arnault’s company growth will be constant in the coming period.
Seems like 2022 was catastrophic for most of the tech giants. Jeff Bezos is one of the people to lose a significant number in 2022. The tech mogul who once was the wealthiest person on the planet is now down to fifth place.
Mark Zuckerberg also. In September 2021 he had a net worth of more than $140 billion. This year in September, just one year later and his net worth was down to $38 billion. At the moment he is in the 15th place on the Forbes list, weighing at about $67 billion.
According to analysts, we can expect Elon Musk’s net worth to drop in the coming period even more. Most of Elon Musk’s worth still comes from Tesla. The reason for the expected drop is the fact that most major automotive companies will take part in the electric vehicles sector. As the automotive giants get into producing electric vehicles, Elon Musk’s product will have bigger competition, resulting in a drop in value on the stock market.
