Investor's Corner
Tesla bull Jim Cramer tells the hard truth about why Wall St is missing the TSLA picture
Tesla’s (NASDAQ:TSLA) third-quarter earnings report proved that Elon Musk’s electric car company has matured into a force of nature that is so resilient, even a literal pandemic couldn’t bring it down. As of Thursday’s close, Tesla stock is up over 400%, a testament to the company’s capability to prove its critics wrong at every turn. Yet even amidst these results, Tesla still has a good number of skeptics on Wall St, many of whom are still unable to wrap their heads around the company and its performance.
For Tesla bear-turned-bull Jim Cramer of CNBC’s Mad Money, the company’s current state is a matter of its products and Elon Musk. During the Q3 earnings call, Cramer noted that Musk was extremely restrained. There was no hyperbole, no eccentricity, no drama — Musk was just a CEO who was reporting on Tesla’s best quarter yet, and he was simply a leader who still believes that the best is yet to come. The Mad Money host further mentioned that Elon Musk almost sounded humble and gracious as he thanked his employees, suppliers, and investors for helping Tesla achieve its remarkable milestones.
With Tesla having a valuation that is far above some of its competitors combined, auto analysts and critics are having a very difficult time justifying the company’s market cap as an automaker today. Cramer argues that critics are missing the big picture, as Tesla has already transcended the auto industry. Just as explained by the company’s bulls, Tesla is more of a tech company now than it is an automaker. And when compared to other companies in the tech sector, Tesla’s $397 billion market cap makes sense. This is especially true considering that Tesla’s products sell themselves, and Elon Musk is a visionary whose brilliance lies in tangible innovation.
“At this point, Tesla has transcended the auto industry. It is a tech company. It’s figured out how to store clean energy and then use it to fuel cars and who knows what else. Most automakers have to spend more money advertising than Tesla spends on building new factories. They blanket the airwaves with ads that no one wants to see, not even the ones voiced by the great John Slattery. Tesla, on the other hand, doesn’t need to advertise.”
“They failed to understand the scale of the opportunity that Tesla held out to individual investors like you, including the younger ones, we call them the Robinhood kind, who’ve taken the market by storm. These analysts did not grasp the younger generation’s more optimistic ethos. To them, Musk is a rebel with a cause — the cause of observable excellence. Not social media mystique or cloud brilliance, but actual metal-bent-around brilliance,” Cramer said.
But even more importantly, the Mad Money host explained that for many retail investors today, Tesla is something far more than a simple venture to put money in. Over the years, and as it battled its way to the top, Tesla and its clean energy vehicles have essentially become symbols of hope and optimism. Tesla is a story of American ingenuity, and as it continues to reach new heights, it is becoming proof that even the everyman investor could make a lot of money if he or she supports a company with a revolutionary product and a CEO who is willing to put it all on the line.
“The analysts couldn’t understand that Tesla’s more than just a vehicle. It’s a vehicle of hope in a miasma of gloom. Musk even made it easier for individual investors to get in by splitting the stock. Now it’s not a cult stock like I once thought. That was wrong. It’s a story of American ingenuity, probably a lot like Henry Ford when he first burst on the scene with his universal car. Except with a much cleaner engine and without Henry Ford’s trademark anti-semitism.
“Here’s the bottom line. When it comes to Tesla, the doubters were wrong and the believers were right. Those believers are not the rich, cautious state preachers of index fund handcuffs. They’re the individual investors who are sick and tired of being told that they’re stupid, too stupid to manage their own money. Turns out they can make a lot of money when you buy stock at a great company with a visionary CEO and a revolutionary product. That shouldn’t take so many people by surprise, and I hope it doesn’t after this shimmering star that is Elon Musk’s Tesla,” Cramer declared.
Watch Jim Cramer’s recent Mad Money segment in the video below.
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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