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Tesla’s unfair advantage: Batteries, talent, and more, says Morgan Stanley

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Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) stock hiked 11.20% in trading on Monday, and Morgan Stanley’s Adam Jonas explained why the company’s future advantage lies within batteries and talented people wanting to work for Elon Musk.

Jonas appeared on an episode of CNBC’s “Squawk Alley” on Monday to discuss his price target for the electric car company, which he increased to $1,360 from $1,050 last week.

According to Jonas, Tesla has the potential to be “a large, if not dominant” third-party battery supplier for other car companies in the future. Morgan Stanley, with the help of technology colleagues in Asia, determined that the company’s potential battery supply business is worth around $310 a share, which contributed to a majority of the $350 price target increase that occurred last week.

But what lies past the development of battery cells is who will develop them, and that is where Jonas says Musk has the most significant advantage in the race to become a large-scale battery supplier.

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“The battery is not mature. This is an arms race. It is an arms race for talent,” Jonas said. “And, amongst all of Elon’s benefits that he has right now, the one that is probably the most valuable and the one that is on display here folks, is that the best people in the world want to work for Elon.”

The best people in the world want to work for Musk, but it isn’t just in the race to become a battery supplier. The world’s most advanced minds are looking for employment in any of Elon’s ventures, Jonas added.

“The best people in batteries, chemistries, software, rockets, you name it, they don’t want to work for some conglomerate in a traditional 1970’s oriented, little bit by bit evolutionary. They want to put their skills to work to just go completely and take it up a notch,” Jonas added. He then indicated that there was value in that, and Morgan Stanley said the additional worth in the price target to coincide with this fact.

However, Jonas’ and Morgan Stanley’s price target for the company is still more than 20% below where TSLA stock was trading at during the Monday session.

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“I didn’t have a chance to ask the question in the last [Earnings] Call, but even Elon, back in May, said he thought his stock was overvalued in his opinion,” Jonas said.

“I can only boil it down for my clients and my colleagues to fundamentals and assumptions. Here’s how I think about it: Each one million units of third-party battery supply is worth maybe $120 a share to Tesla. We gave them about two and a half million units by 2030, so that was about $310. If you wanted to get to $2,000, let’s say, just solving for batteries alone, we think you’d have to get closer to ten million units of batteries in addition to the three or four or five or ten million that people were giving them credit for in their own business,” he added.

Jonas believes that if an analyst were to do that, Tesla would be getting 100% or at least a large portion of the battery market share for EVs by 2030, which to him, does not seem realistic. Instead, the price that the company is trading at currently has to do with another unaccounted factor. He believes that it could be autonomy, or something unorthodox, like a relationship with SpaceX, but he sticks with his current $1,360 price target with an “Equal-Weight” rating.

TSLA stock closed at $1,835.64 on Monday. It gained only $.36 during aftermarket trading.

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Disclosure: I have no ownership in shares of TSLA and have no plans to initiate any positions within 72 hours.

H/t: @TeslaNY on Twitter

Joey has been a journalist covering electric mobility at TESLARATI since August 2019. In his spare time, Joey is playing golf, watching MMA, or cheering on any of his favorite sports teams, including the Baltimore Ravens and Orioles, Miami Heat, Washington Capitals, and Penn State Nittany Lions. You can get in touch with joey at joey@teslarati.com. He is also on X @KlenderJoey. If you're looking for great Tesla accessories, check out shop.teslarati.com

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Investor's Corner

Tesla gets its latest short from Michael Burry: ‘Happy it jumped back to this level’

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Credit: MarcoRP | X

Tesla short seller Michael Burry, the subject of the film “The Big Short,” where he was portrayed by Steve Carell, has revealed he has opened a new bet against the stock.

In a new update to his Substack newsletter in a post titled “Trading Post June 30, 2026,” Burry revealed a new set of bets against Tesla, Caterpillar, NVIDIA, Applied Materials Inc., and the iShares Semiconductor ETF.

In regard to Tesla, Burry wrote:

“And finally I shorted Tesla at 416.22. Happy it jumped back to this level.”

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This means Burry likely opened his new short position after the company’s recent rally on Wall Street, which saw Tesla shares sink in mid-May, only to recover to well over the $400 mark. Currently, shares trade at around $427.

The company saw a big Tuesday as shares climbed considerably, over 10 percent. The size of the Tesla short was not provided, nor did Burry give any information on the position’s structure, the number of shares, dollar value, or whether options were used in the short.

The Tesla and SpaceX merger everyone is talking about is quietly building

Over the years, Burry has been one of the more vocal critics of Tesla, calling its share price “media inflated,” and saying it was “ridiculously overvalued” as recently as December.

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The company has largely transitioned away from being known as an automotive company and instead is much more widely regarded as an AI play, mostly due to its Full Self-Driving efforts, Optimus robot development, and data collection related to both.

This has not pulled those skeptics away from being vocal about their distaste for how Tesla is valued, but there’s no denying that the company is a global force in many things, including sustainable energy, automotive, and AI.

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Investor's Corner

SpaceX gets initial stock coverage from Tesla’s biggest bull

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SpaceX Starship V3 flight 12
SpaceX Starship V3 flight 12 (Credit: SpaceX)

Wedbush Securities is initiating stock coverage on SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX), marking the first comments on the company since it went public several weeks ago. Wedbush and its analyst handling coverage, Dan Ives, are widely bullish on fellow Musk company Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA).

Ives wrote his first note initiating coverage of SpaceX shares on Wednesday with a $190 price target and an ‘Outperform’ rating. The firm believes the company is well positioned off of its IPO because of its wide array of projects, including AI compute power and infrastructure, connectivity projects, and launches.

“We view SpaceX as one of the most differentiated assets within the tech market with a strong footprint across its three core markets, with Starlink driving success with connectivity,” Ives wrote, “Starship launches leading to a demand flywheel and increasing deal flow for its Colossus clusters.”

Elon Musk called it Epic: The full story of SpaceX’s Starship Flight 12

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Wedbush leans heavily on Starlink, which they say is the “profitability driver given the strength of its recurring revenue base of ~12 million subscribers as of June 5th.” Ives believes Starlink is still in the “early innings” of penetrating the global telecommunications and broadband market, as it only holds less than a 1 percent share. However, this number is sure to increase over time.

It also highlights the importance of Starship, which it says is an “essential layer” of SpaceX’s overall success. SpaceX developing and displaying the ability to reuse rockets is a major cost and reliability advantage “as it reduces the necessary hardware launch costs while generating a feedback loop for future flights to improve their launch flight rate without accelerating capex spend.”

Finally, SpaceX’s recent AI/Compute projects are also very elementary, Ives writes. It is worth mentioning Wedbush said its $190 price target is derived from a valuation forecast that sees the company yielding roughly $2.48 trillion of implied enterprise value.

There are also some factors that Wedbush did not take into account with its initial coverage. The firm wrote in the note:

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“We note that there is optional value coming from Starship’s accelerating scale towards sub-$200/kg unit economics, orbital data centers, and enterprise AI monetization as these factors could drive meaningful upside but these face major hurdles, so we do not take that into account with our valuation.”

SpaceX shares are down just over 2 percent today, trading at around $167 at the time of publication.

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Elon Musk

Tesla Phone? Not quite, but close: analyst

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elon musk phone
Photo: Boss Hunting.com.au

For years, there have been images and videos across social media platforms that have reminded me of when I was a 15-year-old kid teased by “Xbox 720” videos on YouTube. These videos are of the supposed “Tesla Phone” that Elon Musk was secretly developing in between leading Tesla with its electric cars and SpaceX with its reusable rockets.

Although Musk has put those rumors to bed several times, it was never completely out of the realm that he could get involved in cell phones in some capacity. Think outside the box and more macro-level, though. Instead of reinventing the computer, Musk reinvented connectivity by developing Starlink with SpaceX.

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It could be something similar, TD Cowen analyst Gregory Williams said in a note last week, where he hinted SpaceX could be gathering some steam to acquire T-Mobile.

Williams said it would be the “clear choice” for SpaceX if it decided to go through with a network acquisition. He also suggested AT&T.

The move would be possible through selling more of its own stock, which would help SpaceX raise the money to purchase T-Mobile, which would cost roughly $300 billion. It could be one of the moves SpaceX makes post-IPO in terms of an acquisition: it already acquired Cursor AI for $60 billion.

Other analysts, like Dan Ives of Wedbush, believe SpaceX and Tesla will eventually merge into one anyway, and that conglomeration could come as soon as this year, some have said.

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The implications of SpaceX purchasing T-Mobile are massive. A combined entity would create a truly ubiquitous network: T-Mobile’s terrestrial 5G towers and Starlink’s growing constellation of Direct-to-Cell satellites. This would essentially eliminate dead zones across the U.S. and potentially globally.

SpaceX would instantly become a full-scale facilities-based carrier with satellite differentiation; a huge advantage. This would pressure AT&T and Verizon heavily.

There are also concerns like a potential reduction in long-term competition, and of course, a deal of that size would face intense scrutiny from government agencies.

The strategic fit is compelling due to the existing Starlink–T-Mobile partnership and complementary technologies (space + terrestrial). It could create a dominant integrated communications player. However, the regulatory, financial, and execution hurdles are enormous — this remains highly speculative with no indication SpaceX is actively pursuing it right now.

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