What Elon Musk’s New Twitter CEO Means for Tesla

We’ve heard much discussion about Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter and how it could affect his time at Tesla. In recent weeks, Musk has publicly named a successor for his position as Twitter CEO, and many Tesla investors and analysts are hopeful it will give him more time to focus on the electric vehicle automaker.

Above: A Tesla Model 3 (Image: Casey Murphy / EVANNEX).

Musk officially named former NBC advertising executive Linda Yaccarino as the new Twitter CEO in a tweet earlier this month, and many hope the change will give him more time to focus on Tesla (via Business Insider). While Musk will still be working at Twitter as its Chief Technology Officer, analysts are already celebrating the shift as good news for Tesla.

I am excited to welcome Linda Yaccarino as the new CEO of Twitter!@LindaYacc will focus primarily on business operations, while I focus on product design & new technology.

Looking forward to working with Linda to transform this platform into X, the everything app. https://t.co/TiSJtTWuky

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 12, 2023

"With the tweet [Thursday] afternoon, Musk's reign as CEO of Twitter has finally come to an end and thus will be a positive for Tesla's stock, starting to finally remove this lingering albatross from the story," wrote Webush Managing Director Dan Ives.

Wedbush currently has an Outperform rating on Tesla’s stock, with a 12-month price target of $215.

Musk explained that his transition will be toward overseeing product, software and sysops, with particular focuses on designing new technology. In a recent interview following the Tesla Shareholders Meeting, Musk described how the new position would be more in line with what he feels good at — engineering and designing the product.

Piper Sandler analyst Alex Potter that increased wait times on U.S. orders should be "interpreted favorably" by shareholders, even if they’re a bit of a headache for a buyers.

"In recent weeks, investors have been asking us why wait times haven't responded more noticeably to Tesla's price cutting campaign," Potter wrote in a memo to clients. "The answer is complex, because wait times don't solely reflect consumers' appetite for buying Teslas vs. other cars."

Currently, Piper Sandler has a $280 12-month price target on Tesla, which would represent about a 65-percent increase from the automaker’s current price. Gene Munster also noted that Musk stepping down as Twitter CEO could open him up to spending more time on other non-Tesla projects, including AI startup X.AI.

At the time of writing, Tesla’s shares are trading for $173.87 (+$0.01), up 0.01 percent after hours.

The news of Musk’s Twitter CEO appointment came just days before Tesla’s 2023 Shareholder’s Meeting, held on May 16 at Gigafactory Texas. During the meeting, shareholders voted to add JB Straubel, head of Redwood Materials and former Tesla executive, to the board of directors as an independent director.

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