Electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla (TSLA) is adding Chipotle Mexican Grill (CMG) President and Chief Strategy Officer Jack Hartung to its board, effective June 1, after Hartung retires from the fast-casual chain.

Yahoo Finance senior autos reporter Pras Subramanian expands upon this news as Tesla sees its fourth straight week of stock gains — rising 44% over the past month — alongside waning sales numbers in China.

To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Market Domination here.

Video Transcript

00:00 Speaker A

Tesla stock on the move after the EV maker added Chipotle president Jack Hartung to its board of directors. Yahoo finances Pras Subramanian joins us now with more. Pras.

00:08 Pras Subramanian

Guys running out, my guy Adam over here man. We got to get water.

00:13 Speaker A

I'm reaching in for the halls. And I brought with me the honey. The honey bun.

00:28 Pras Subramanian

Right there. This is me. This is me almost every day. Truly Hyman puts up with it. Bring us up to speed on Tesla Pras.

00:36 Pras Subramanian

Yes, so so the stock on a tear actually this past this week and also the last four weeks and rep. Four up weeks Musk just tweeted right now a picture of the stock chart. Stock up 48% in the last month. So a lot going on there with with the stock. You know, still down 13% for the year so not exactly back to par here. But yeah, a new board member added today. Jack Hartung's former president, the ninth board member now added to the to the to the committee. Uh you know, this this board has been under under a lot of scrutiny lately with uh Chair Robin Denholm sort of selling a lot of stock. They've had to redo Musk's pay package that was again controversial.

01:18 Speaker A

That's all in Delaware, correct?

01:23 Pras Subramanian

Right now it's on it's on appeal in Delaware. Uh reports suggest that if that doesn't go through, they're going to go they're going to push it through Texas law this time because they're they're redomiciled or uh re uh new corporate home is is Texas. So that's what's going on right there. So a lot going on with Tesla from a board management, but also the stock moving today and up potentially for the fourth week in a row.

01:50 Speaker A

What happens in April by the way? I'm very curious about that because and you've written about this Pras. Don't you'll hear bulls say that should be a good month because okay, I have a whole month of refresh model Y that's out there. On the other hand, what the skeptics say, well maybe not so fast because maybe folks think oh hey, that cheaper version's coming. So how does this balance out?

02:21 Pras Subramanian

You know, typically Q1, which was not good for Tesla, is their lightest quarter. It's usually a quarter where not not much sales happening across a number of regions. Usually, you know, Q3 Q4 are their big quarters. Q2 better usually better than Q1, so that's a lot to kind of watch here, but the April numbers are coming in for some of the territories. You know Tesla doesn't report by geography so we got to look at registration data, uh stuff from car associations and we saw we've seen Europe now, right? Last year the China chart. China down 6% in April uh based on from their their car association numbers there. That includes exports too, but down 26% sequentially from March. So you kind of see a little bit weakness there. And for China, it's not really the Musk factor, it's more about there's just so much competition, better cars, cheaper cars, uh technology is more tuned to the buyers. That's sort of the problem for Tesla. Used to be considered a cool brand in the mainland and now the Chinese domestic automakers are considered the cool auto makers there.

03:29 Speaker A

I was talking to auto analysts recently too Pras, who were looking over data and they were kind of suggesting to me that there was maybe some shift of would be EV shoppers, at least being more open more open to other brands in in the past. I don't know if that's model Y change over. I don't know if that's branding and politics. Maybe it's everything. I'm not sure.

03:55 Pras Subramanian

Yeah, I think it's a mix of, you know, the politics must sort of behavior. Uh but I think you're absolutely right about the fact there's so much more competition now. Better cars from Hyundai, Ford, uh GM even the GM's full portfolio of EVs. And we're still talking about EVs. They're a small subset of sales are growing, but still a small subset. Tesla still is the big gorilla, 800 pound gorilla. Over 40% of sales are Tesla EVs compared to you know, the rest of everything else. So there's still the the big animal there, but the question is how long can they maintain that dominance? It's still being chipped away, chipped away, chipped away uh in this country at least.

04:41 Speaker A

Yeah, I'm going car shopping this weekend, but it's not for an EV price. It's not. More later on that. You're a diesel guy.

04:50 Pras Subramanian

I like the burn stuff, you know.  Related Videos

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