What happened
Shares of Tesla (TSLA 12.01%) were hit hard on Friday, declining as much as 9.9%. As of 12:20 p.m. EST, however, the stock was down just 5%.
Friday's decline adds to a sharp pullback in the electric-car maker's shares over the past week. Shares are down 28.6% over the past seven days.
Model S. Image source: Tesla.
So what
Tesla's decline on Friday comes as the overall market continues to sell off amid coronavirus fears. At the time of this writing, the S&P 500 is down 2.4% on Friday and 12.9% over the last seven days.
Though Tesla stock seems to have fallen off a cliff recently, it's still impressively up more than 200% over the past six months. Investors in the automaker, therefore, may be taking profits and reassessing whether the stock's valuation was running too high.
Now what
Going into 2020, Tesla expected vehicle deliveries to rise from around 368,000 in 2019 to more than 500,000 this year. When the automaker reports vehicle deliveries for its first quarter in early April, investors should look to see if headwinds in China due to the coronavirus are making this target difficult to hit.
