Liam Denning, Columnist

2022 Has Not Been Kind to Musk's Tesla. Exxon Is Catching Up.

The EV company could use an activist investor to revive its stock fortunes and get its CEO back on track.

December 16, 2022 at 4:02 PM UTC

Liam Denning is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering energy. A former banker, he edited the Wall Street Journal’s Heard on the Street column and wrote the Financial Times’s Lex column.

What next for Tesla?
Photographer: Pool/Getty Images Europe

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Just two months ago, Elon Musk speculated that Tesla Inc. would eventually be worth twice as much as Saudi Arabian Oil Co. — AKA Saudi Aramco, AKA the biggest listed company in the world with a market capitalization (then) of $2.1 trillion. As it turns out, the more relevant comparison is with a somewhat smaller oil major.

The symbolism of Tesla’s electrified market cap surpassing that of Big Oil stalwart Exxon Mobil Corp. in June 2020 was inescapable. By the beginning of this year, Tesla was 350% bigger than Exxon. Yet a lot has happened in the intervening (almost) 12 months and especially the last (almost) two months. Russia invaded Ukraine, sending oil markets crazy (good for Exxon). And then Musk invaded Twitter Inc., sending everyone crazy (not so good for Tesla). On Thursday evening, the platform hosted yet more convulsions as Musk suspended the accounts of several journalists on dubious grounds and deployed, with his unique phrasing, the term “assassination coordinates.”