SpaceX’s pending IPO reportedly scheduled for June will double Musk’s publicly traded companies, joining Tesla as a target for investors betting on the CEO’s moonshot goals around automation and space exploration. But rather than seeing twice the opportunity to cash in on a Musk-led enterprise, investors and analysts instead see red flags for Tesla stock.
“This cannot be a positive for Tesla,” Joe Gilbert, portfolio manager at Integrity Asset Management, told Bloomberg. “We believe that Musk’s focus will predominantly be lasered on SpaceX. Musk has proved to be able to balance multiple initiatives simultaneously in the past, but it feels like SpaceX is his new baby at the expense of Tesla.”
Tesla has had a difficult year: It saw the company’s first full-year revenue decline in its history last year, and despite improved sales in the first three months of this year, deliveries have fallen below analysts’ expectations, and production has continued to outpace sales.
Tesla did not respond to Fortune’s request for comment.
Though its stock is down about 5% year-to-date, Tesla’s stock trades well above what its fundamental performance reflects, according to analysts. Musk has recently touted Tesla as less of an electric vehicle producer and more of an AI and robotics company, exemplified by his projection that 80% of the company’s total value will be represented in its humanoid Optimus robot, despite no evidence of the project’s scaling, let alone to Musk’s goal of an annual capacity of 1 million robots.
