Italian luxury sports car maker Ferrari (NYSE: RACE) is Morgan Stanley’s pick as the firm’s “favorite electric vehicle stock for 2022,” according to a note released by the Autos and Shared Mobility team. Led by analysts Adam Jonas, Morgan Stanley’s team of stock professionals chose Ferrari over other high-powered EV stock favorites, including Rivian and Tesla, both of which are widely considered the most promising and overall leader of the EV industry, respectively.
“Ferrari was listed as “Our new ‘Top Pick’ (replacing GM),” Morgan Stanley wrote in a note to investors released this morning. “Can justify 100% of the company’s market cap with ‘fine-art’ ICE business…leaving [for] the EV business (currently in skunkworks) for free. This makes RACE our favorite EV stock for 2022.” Ferrari was listed ahead of Rivian, which is ranked 2nd on Morgan Stanley’s list, and Tesla, which sits in fourth, behind Freyr, a Norway-based company in the business of manufacturing battery cells with sustainable energy.
US Auto Stock Rankings for FY 22 | Morgan Stanley/Adam Jonas
Ferrari is the new ‘Top Pick’ ?? $RACE$GM$RIVN$TSLA pic.twitter.com/KRcbjahHOb
— David Tayar (@davidtayar5) January 4, 2022
Morgan Stanley’s outlook on Ferrari is interesting, especially as the company has not technically made any formal statement regarding plans to transition to a full lineup of electric cars. The Italian company does have plans to launch its first all-electric model in 2025, company boss John Elkann said in April 2021. Ferrari’s commercial boss, Enrico Galliera, said it would not produce any BEV models until EV tech would allow the company to “produce a car that fits with our position.” Galliera said, “If we bring in new technology, then we need to bring something new to the market. That’s how Ferrari has always worked with new technology. The evolution of new technology is 100% in the DNA of Ferrari.”
The company’s position regarding EVs was only solidified in 2021, as Elkann stated during the Ferrari Q2 Earnings Call that executives welcomed regulations that would restrict the widespread production of gas-powered engines. However, there could be a substantial wait for Ferrari to make a full-fledged shift to EVs, as Elkann added, “… we’ll have changes within the energy supply, which could lead to having alternatives, for example, e-fuels or hydrogen. But that is really 2030, 2040, and most likely midpoint 2035, where we’ll see this happening. What we want to make sure is to be able to use the technologies available, which today are hybrid going to electric and exploiting those to the fullest and in the best way possible.”
Tesla Model 3 Performance charms legendary Ferrari test driver
Morgan Stanley placed an “Overweight” rating on Ferrari with a $350 price target. Ferrari shares were trading at $235.10 at the time of writing.
Interestingly, Rivian and Tesla were subsided by Morgan Stanley’s note. Rivian began deliveries of its first EV, the R1T pickup truck, in late October. Morgan Stanley’s note indicates that Rivian (NASDAQ: RIVN) is “The One” for your portfolio, based on “a clean-sheet strategy with deterministic capital (raised ~$25bn) focused on adventure and commercial fleets.” Analysts stated that 2022 will be a tumultuous year for the automaker’s stock as it attempts to ramp manufacturing. Rivian will break ground on its second U.S. facility during Summer 2022. The new plant will be located near Atlanta, Georgia.
Rivian was given an “Overweight” rating with a $147 price target. Shares were trading at $100.65 at the time of writing.
Meanwhile, Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) is ranked as the fourth-best EV stock for 2022. “While Tesla is not our top EV pick, it’s arguably our most ‘important’ stock pick. Not owning Tesla means not owning the one company that could make all your other EV names obsolete. A big 4Q delivery beat is just the opening act. Gigapress and structural pack come to life in 2022.”
Tesla will also have Gigafactory Berlin and Gigafactory Texas coming to life this year, which could expand the production output by 1 million units when coupled with potential expansions at Fremont and Gigafactory Shanghai. Tesla came just shy of the 1 million unit mark that many thought the company would reach this year. However, the automaker is still the most valuable car company in the world and is the sole reason for the EV movement in 2022.
Morgan Stanley gave Tesla an “Overweight” rating with a price target of $1,200. Shares were trading at $1,143 at the time of writing.
Disclosure: Joey Klender is a $TSLA Shareholder. He currently does not own any $RACE or $RIVN shares.
I’d love to hear from you! If you have any comments, concerns, or questions, please email me at joey@teslarati.com. You can also reach me on Twitter @KlenderJoey, or if you have news tips, you can email us at tips@teslarati.com.
Elon Musk
Tesla locks in Elon Musk’s top problem solver as it enters its most ambitious era
The generous equity award was disclosed by the electric vehicle maker in a recent regulatory filing.
Tesla has granted Senior Vice President of Automotive Tom Zhu more than 520,000 stock options, tying a significant portion of his compensation to the company’s long-term performance.
The generous equity award was disclosed by the electric vehicle maker in a recent regulatory filing.
Tesla secures top talent
According to a Form 4 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Tom Zhu received 520,021 stock options with an exercise price of $435.80 per share. Since the award will not fully vest until March 5, 2031, Zhu must remain at Tesla for more than five years to realize the award’s full benefit.
Considering that Tesla shares are currently trading at around the $445 to $450 per share level, Zhu will really only see gains in his equity award if Tesla’s stock price sees a notable rise over the years, as noted in a Sina Finance report.
Still, even at today’s prices, Zhu’s stock award is already worth over $230 million. If Tesla reaches the market cap targets set forth in Elon Musk’s 2025 CEO Performance Award, Zhu would become a billionaire from this equity award alone.
Tesla’s problem solver
Zhu joined Tesla in April 2014 and initially led the company’s Supercharger rollout in China. Later that year, he assumed the leadership of Tesla’s China business, where he played a central role in Tesla’s localization efforts, including expanding retail and service networks, and later, overseeing the development of Gigafactory Shanghai.
Zhu’s efforts helped transform China into one of Tesla’s most important markets and production hubs. In 2023, Tesla promoted Zhu to Senior Vice President of Automotive, placing him among the company’s core global executives and expanding his influence beyond China. He has since garnered a reputation as the company’s problem solver, being tapped by Elon Musk to help ramp Giga Texas’s vehicle production.
With this in mind, Tesla’s recent filing seems to suggest that the company is locking in its top talent as it enters its newest, most ambitious era to date. As could be seen in the targets of Elon Musk’s 2025 pay package, Tesla is now aiming to be the world’s largest company by market cap, and it is aiming to achieve production levels that are unheard of. Zhu’s talents would definitely be of use in this stage of the company’s growth.
Tesla analyst Andrew Percoco of Morgan Stanley teased the company’s dominance in its self-driving initiative, stating that its lead over competitors is “not even close.”
Percoco recently overtook coverage of Tesla stock from Adam Jonas, who had covered the company at Morgan Stanley for years. Percoco is handling Tesla now that Jonas is covering embodied AI stocks and no longer automotive.
His first move after grabbing coverage was to adjust the price target from $410 to $425, as well as the rating from ‘Overweight’ to ‘Equal Weight.’
Percoco’s new note regarding Tesla highlights the company’s extensive lead in self-driving and autonomy projects, something that it has plenty of competition in, but has established its prowess over the past few years.
He writes:
“It’s not even close. Tesla continues to lead in autonomous driving, even as Nvidia rolls out new technology aimed at helping other automakers build driverless systems.”
Percoco’s main point regarding Tesla’s advantage is the company’s ability to collect large amounts of training data through its massive fleet, as millions of cars are driving throughout the world and gathering millions of miles of vehicle behavior on the road.
This is the main point that Percoco makes regarding Tesla’s lead in the entire autonomy sector: data is King, and Tesla has the most of it.
One big story that has hit the news over the past week is that of NVIDIA and its own self-driving suite, called Alpamayo. NVIDIA launched this open-source AI program last week, but it differs from Tesla’s in a significant fashion, especially from a hardware perspective, as it plans to use a combination of LiDAR, Radar, and Vision (Cameras) to operate.
Percoco said that NVIDIA’s announcement does not impact Morgan Stanley’s long-term opinions on Tesla and its strength or prowess in self-driving.
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang commends Tesla’s Elon Musk for early belief
And, for what it’s worth, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang even said some remarkable things about Tesla following the launch of Alpamayo:
“I think the Tesla stack is the most advanced autonomous vehicle stack in the world. I’m fairly certain they were already using end-to-end AI. Whether their AI did reasoning or not is somewhat secondary to that first part.”
Percoco reiterated both the $425 price target and the ‘Equal Weight’ rating on Tesla shares.
Tesla stock (NASDAQ: TSLA) just got a price target boost from its biggest bear, Gordon Johnson of GLJ Research, who raised his expected trading level to one that is 95 percent lower than its current trading level.
Johnson pushed his Tesla price target from $19.05 to $25.28 on Wednesday, while maintaining the ‘Sell’ rating that has been present on the stock for a long time. GLJ has largely been recognized as the biggest skeptic of Elon Musk’s company, being particularly critical of the automotive side of things.
Tesla has routinely been called out by Johnson for negative delivery growth, what he calls “weakening demand,” and price cuts that have occurred in past years, all pointing to them as desperate measures to sell its cars.
Johnson has also said that Tesla is extremely overvalued and is too reliant on regulatory credits for profitability. Other analysts on the bullish side recognize Tesla as a company that is bigger than just its automotive side.
Many believe it is a leader in autonomous driving, like Dan Ives of Wedbush, who believes Tesla will have a widely successful 2026, especially if it can come through on its targets and schedules for Robotaxi and Cybercab.
Justifying the price target this week, Johnson said that the revised valuation is based on “reality rather than narrative.” Tesla has been noted by other analysts and financial experts as a stock that trades on narrative, something Johnson obviously disagrees with.
Dan Nathan, a notorious skeptic of the stock, turned bullish late last year, recognizing the company’s shares trade on “technicals and sentiment.” He said, “From a trading perspective, it looks very interesting.”
Tesla bear turns bullish for two reasons as stock continues boost
Johnson has remained very consistent with this sentiment regarding Tesla and his beliefs regarding its true valuation, and has never shied away from putting his true thoughts out there.
Tesla shares closed at $431.40 today, about 95 percent above where Johnson’s new price target lies.
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Tesla locks in Elon Musk’s top problem solver as it enters its most ambitious era
