American billionaire Elon Musk is facing negative events over the past two days, starting with Tesla announcing a 24% drop in profits, and reaching the climax with the explosion of the largest and most powerful experimental SpaceX rocket in the world.
Quarterly profits for Tesla declined by 24% in the first quarter of 2023 to $2.5 billion, despite the company’s higher revenues, and this led to a 9.75% drop in the electric car maker’s share, Thursday, to $162.99, reports Al-Qabas daily.
Tesla has reduced the selling prices of its cars 6 times since the beginning of this year in an attempt to stimulate demand for its production.
The other most prominent negative event for Musk, at the level of his second company, SpaceX, came with the explosion of its largest and most powerful experimental Starship rocket in the world, designated for trips to the moon and Mars, Thursday.
The missile succeeded in taking off from Texas, but exploded after about 4 minutes, and became a fireball over the Gulf of Mexico.
The “Star Ship” is 120 meters long, which is longer than the new giant “NASA” rocket “SLS” with a length of 98 meters, which was launched on a first mission in November, and the “Saturn 5” rocket with a length of 111 meters for the Apollo missions from NASA.
The Starship is supposed to have a take-off power twice as strong as the SLS and Saturn 5, making it the most powerful rocket in the world.
After these successive events, billionaire Elon Musk lost nearly $13 billion of his wealth in one day.
Musk topped the most losing billionaires in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, bringing his total wealth down to $164 billion, ranking him second in the world’s billionaires, after Bernard Arnault, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the French luxury goods giant Louisville, with a total wealth of $211 billion.
Musk, 51, is CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, as well as Twitter, which he acquired over the past year.
Read Today's News TODAY... on our Telegram Channel click here to join and receive all the latest updates t.me/thetimeskuwait
