Meta commits 20% of future costs to the metaverse

In today’s top stories, Tesla’s sentiment is “severely damaged” according to Oppenheimer, while Lucid Motors raises $1.5bn and its share price rallies in response. Malaysia’s stock exchange has entered the voluntary carbon market, partaking in Asia’s carbon offsetting boom. Meta’s commits 20% of next year’s costs to Reality Labs and Evercore is recommending Amazon stock.

Tesla’s sentiment is damaged

It’s been a rough ride of late for the Tesla [TSLA] share price. Oppenheimer analyst Colin Rusch downgraded the company from outperform to perform at the start of the week, arguing that the sentiment is “severely damaged”. The stock closed down 0.24% on Monday, faring better than the broader market, but remains under pressure due to Elon Musk’s Twitter antics. Following a series of cost-cutting measures, the struggling social media platform is on the hunt for more funding.

Lucid Motors raises $1.5bn

Musk tweeted earlier this month that Lucid Motors [LCID] is “not long for this world” in reply to reports that the luxury EV maker and Tesla rival is cutting prices by 10% to push through orders. Concerns about its backlog of orders and customer cancellations have led the Lucid Motors share price to slide 35.8% in the past month, but it was up 5% pre-market Tuesday after announcing a $1.5bn capital raise “to strengthen its balance sheet and liquidity position”.

Asia’s carbon offsetting boom

Bourses across Asia are looking to capitalise on the carbon offsetting gold rush. Malaysia’s stock exchange entered the voluntary carbon market earlier this month, following Hong Kong in October, and Japan and Thailand in September. “We’re in another one of those mad dashes … We’ve seen this rush before, if you look at the early days of blockchain,” Thomas McMahon, co-founder of AirCarbon, one of Singapore’s voluntary carbon exchanges, told Bloomberg.

Meta’s commits 20% of costs to Reality Labs

Mark Zuckerberg continues to double down on his vision to lead the race to build the metaverse. Meta [META] has announced that it intends to commit 20% of overall investments going forward to augmented reality and virtual reality hardware. CTO Andrew Bosworth wrote in a blog post that there can be “disastrous consequences” if you ”cut back on your ambitions, stick to what’s safest and most profitable today”. 

Evercore likes Amazon’s market opportunities

Warren Buffett is known for his ‘buy and hold’ strategy – Amazon [AMZN] would fit his portfolio perfectly, according to Evercore analyst Mark Mahaney. While Evercore has cut its 2023 and 2024 revenue and operating income estimates for the advertising, cloud and e-commerce giant, Mahaney argued it’s “the most broadly and successfully diversified [internet] company in terms of its market opportunities”.