Tesla lost $140 billion in market value in under a month, faces these mounting troubles

• Tesla’s share price plunged this month, wiping out over $140 billion in market capitalization.
• Aggressive price cuts have eaten into the EV maker’s profits, and Q1 sales fell short of some estimates despite the discounts.
• Here’s everything you need to know about the latest fluctuations in Tesla’s fortunes.

This has been a cruel month for Tesla.

The EV maker has shed more than a fifth of its overall valuation in the past 26 days, with its share price plunging on disappointing first-quarter delivery and profit numbers.

Wall Street’s top analysts have turned cautious on the tech giant – and the selloff has likely wiped out some of CEO Elon Musk’s own personal fortune.

Here’s what you need to know.

What happened?

Tesla shares have plummeted 22% in under a month, dropping from over $207 on March 31 to the $160.67 level they traded at when markets closed Tuesday.

That means the stock is significantly lagging the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite index, which slipped just 2% in April, and the benchmark S&P 500, which has traded roughly level over the same period.

The EV maker’s stock plunge has wiped out about $143 billion in value for investors, with its total market capitalization plunging to $513 billion from $657 billion at the end of last month.

Meta Platforms has eclipsed Tesla to become the world’s eighth-largest publicly-listed company due to those losses – while surging French luxury goods provider LVMH is hot on the EV maker’s heels, having become the first European firm to reach the $500 billion market cap milestone this week.

What drove the stock slide?

Tesla has slashed car prices six times in 2023 – meaning that the entry-level Model 3 now costs less than $40,000, down from $62,990 at the start of the year, while the Model S and Model X are also 20% cheaper than they were on January 1.

Following the aggressive cuts, the company’s first-quarter deliveries hit a record but still fell short of some Wall Street estimates. And some analysts are taking that as a sign that the price war isn’t stoking demand fast enough to offset the effects of a faltering global economy.

Shares fell as much as 7% on April 3 after Tesla released the sales numbers, which showed it had produced around 17,000 more vehicles than it had delivered in the three months ended March 31. Data…