Investor's Corner
Tesla partner Panasonic will add funding to Gigafactory if needed, says exec
On the heels of news that Tesla has managed to hit its target of producing 5,000 Model 3 per week, Panasonic Corp, the company’s battery partner, has stated that it would consider additional investment in the Nevada Gigafactory if requested by the electric car maker.
According to Yoshio Ito, the chief of Panasonic’s automotive business, the additional funding, if Tesla does request for it, would come on top of the ~$1.6 billion that the Japanese battery company is contributing to the $5 billion Nevada facility. Ito related Panasonic’s update during a media roundtable on Monday.
“We would, of course, consider additional investment if we are requested to do so,” Ito said, according to a Reuters report.
Panasonic currently stands as the exclusive battery cell supplier for Tesla’s electric cars and energy storage products. During a general shareholders meeting last week, Ito noted that the accelerating pace of the Model 3’s production has already been causing battery cell shortages.
Ito’s latest statement comes as the latest vote of confidence for Tesla, which recently confirmed via a leaked Elon Musk email that it has managed to produce 5,000 Model 3 on top of 2,000 Model S and Model X in seven days. With the confirmation from Elon Musk, the company has managed to produce 7,000 vehicles in a single week — a feat that has eluded the company since the Model 3 started production last year.
Tesla’s Gigafactory in Nevada is the lifeblood of the Model 3 production, considering that its battery packs and drivetrains are manufactured in the facility. While the massive factory has been growing from within this year so far, signs have been emerging that the site has been seeing a lot of activity as of late. At the end of May alone, reports emerged that Tesla was flying in six airplanes’ worth of robots and equipment from Europe to the United States. The robots, which were from Tesla Grohmann Automation in Germany, were reportedly installed at the Gigafactory, enabling the company to address production bottlenecks in the Model 3’s battery module line.
Tesla has also all but finished building a new, expansive parking lot on the North side of the facility. Considering that the company’s parking lots are currently located in close proximity to the Gigafactory, the newly-built parking spaces could very well tease a renewed physical expansion of the facility in the near future. The facility, after all, is still less than 30% complete, despite constructions costs for the Gigafactory reaching $1.3 billion as of February 2018. Once finished, the Nevada Gigafactory is expected to be the world’s largest building by physical footprint, covering 13 million square feet.
Elon Musk has also revealed plans to build Tesla’s next two Gigafactories, the first of which being in China and the next being established in Europe. Tesla has not revealed the specific sites of the next two Gigafactories, but expectations are high that the China facility will be built in Shanghai and the Europe factory will be established in Germany. As noted by Elon Musk during the company’s Q1 2018 earnings call, these next Gigafactories would incorporate both battery production and vehicles production, allowing Tesla to streamline its manufacturing in a single site.
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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