Elon Musk's 'Master Plan' for Tesla fails to charge up investors

Tesla CEO Elon Musk in San Francisco, California. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Tesla Inc's shares fell about 7% on Thursday, after Chief Executive Elon Musk and team's nearly four-hour presentation failed to impress investors looking out for an announcement on an affordable electric car.

Musk and more than a dozen executives laid out fresh plans to cut assembly costs by half, invest in a new plant in Mexico and discussed the company's innovation in managing its operations at Tesla's investor day on Wednesday.

However, the event, where Musk revealed the EV maker's 'Master Plan 3', was short on details about the timeline for the concepts presented and any new Tesla products.

"The biggest surprise coming out of Tesla investor day is that there wasn't a surprise," Guido Petrelli, founder of Merlin Investor.

Tesla's stock, which had lost about two-thirds of its value in 2022, has climbed more than 60% this year.

"The markets were primed for a big announcement, perhaps on something like a more affordable new model... It may just have been a case of failing to live up to the hype," said Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell.

"Musk's Master Plan 3 was more a message of hope for widespread electrification than a roadmap for Tesla," Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi said, calling the event "somewhat disjointed and fairly technical."

Tesla's events have created a stir on the internet in the past, with Musk's dance moves at the opening of the company's Berlin plant in 2022 and an event in China in 2020 going viral on social media.

The company's plan to use 75% less silicon carbide vehicles without compromising the performance or the efficiency of the cars also weighed on semiconductor makers and suppliers STMicroelectronics (STM.PA) and Wolfspeed Inc (WOLF.N).

The reduction plan is "bad news for the whole silicon carbide production chain and in particular for STMicro," brokerage Equita said.