Thursday was a bad day for Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO Elon Musk, who suffered a loss of about $390 million in papers following the explosion of his SpaceX rocket.
The blast sent shares of Tesla down to over 5% and SolarCity Corp (NASDAQ:SCTY) stock to just over 9% on Thursday. The $62 million rocket owned by Musk’s SpaceX was on a mission to place a satellite over the equator to expand communications in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, CNBC reported.
Musk is CEO of Tesla, and also serves as chairman SolarCity. He owns SpaceX as well.
Musk holds more than 31 million shares in Tesla. The billionaire booked a loss of nearly $350 million yesterday after the stock fell 5.3%, according to FactSet.
Musk owns 22 million shares in SolarCity. His daily loss was $42 million on Thursday after the company’s stock dropped 9.1%.
Tesla shares are moving towards a fifth-straight week of declines since their six-week losing streak ended Feb. 12. The stock lost nearly 10.4% the week ended June 24, when the U.K. vote to leave the European Union triggered a global stock market sell-off, CNBC reported.
Musk wants to combine Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) and SolarCity into a company selling both cars and solar systems.
The companies appear to be facing financial problems. In a recent filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the electric car maker disclosed that it has to release $422 million to its bondholders in the third quarter.
To fund its proposed merger with SolarCity, the electric car make plans to raise additional money by the end of the year, The Wall Street Journal reported.
To reduce the risk of accidents involving the company’s Autopilot, Musk recently said that the company plans to educate people on how to Autopilot. He also announced that Tesla will soon release a major update for its Autopilot feature.
