Tesla Inc. shares dropped on Monday after Chief Executive Elon Musk backed out of his plan to take the Silicon Valley car maker private, and Wall Street remained divided about the stock.
Tesla TSLA, -1.65% lost 4% in early trading and suffered steeper losses in the premarket after closing Friday at $322.82. Tossing yet another curveball at investors, Musk announced in a blog late Friday that he had concluded taking Tesla private was too complicated and distracting, and that it was “better off as a public company.”
Shares have been on a roller-coaster ride since Musk floated the idea of privatization in an Aug. 7 tweet, which reportedly has sparked a Securities and Exchange investigation. They rallied 11% on that day to close at $379.57; they are off 18% from that peak and off nearly 9% from the close on the day before the tweet.
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