Investor's Corner
Tesla Investor Day is key to further stock growth, Morgan Stanley says
Tesla Investor Day on March 1 will be a key factor in furthering the company’s stock growth, Morgan Stanley said in a new note to investors.
While Tesla stock (NASDAQ: TSLA) continues to rebound after a sluggish 2022, Morgan Stanley is undoubtedly impressed with the automaker’s recovery in 2023. However, the firm, led by analyst Adam Jonas, said the “window of opportunity” has closed in terms of valuation, and Tesla will need to present something relatively substantial at its Investor Day event in March:
“While we reiterate the Overweight rating on Tesla shares, we believe the window of opportunity on ‘valuation’ has closed. Further upside from here will require a more substantial narrative change following the March 1st Investor Day.”
Tesla has utilized its leverage in high margins to adjust prices accordingly in 2023, which has undoubtedly surged the company’s demand. Tesla has never had a demand problem, according to CEO Elon Musk, just a supply issue as the company has struggled to keep up with its evergrowing order log.
Despite this, Tesla made moves with its pricing early in 2023, cutting Model Y marks by $13,000. Other cars had price cuts as well, and Tesla even adjusted its figures in other markets, like China, which saw a 13.5 percent decrease after the New Year.
With the Model Y’s entire lineup recently being included in the IRS’s list of vehicles qualifying for federal tax incentives, it gives buyers even more reason to purchase the car. However, an increase in demand is not what Morgan Stanley is looking for.
Invitations for the March 1st Investor Day were sent out earlier this week, and the casting design featured on the invites triggered a variety of theories and guesses as to what the main sentiment of the event will be. However, whatever it is, Morgan Stanley and Jonas said in their note that potential catalysts stemming from the Master Plan Part 3 would have to give investors another layer of belief that substantial growth is possible moving forward.
Even still, the note also entails that, while Tesla may need something relatively groundbreaking moving forward to justify another spike in valuation, the company still maintains a healthy lead over its competitors.
Jonas notes that Tesla shares are up 68 percent this year, while Lucid and Rivian are up 51 and 5 percent, respectively. “Tesla will, short term, invest their margin into price (lower) while, longer term, we expect Tesla will invest their innovation into margin.”
Additionally, Jonas stated that Tesla has specific leverage over competitors:
“At the same time, we remain concerned about the ability of EV competitors (startups and legacy players) to withstand the cost and scale advantages Tesla enjoys as it continues to drive prices lower and share higher in a potential shakeout for the EV industry.”
Companies like Ford, Lucid, and others have also adjusted prices to keep up with Tesla, while companies like Volvo, Volkswagen, and General Motors have denied that price cuts are the answer to compete with the EV leader. Regardless of the pricing strategies the companies employ, Tesla is likely still the most suitable options in terms of charging infrastructure, as well as EV software and tech.
Morgan Stanley reiterated its ‘Overweight’ rating with a $220 price target.
Disclosure: Joey Klender is a TSLA Shareholder.
Tesla stock (NASDAQ: TSLA) closed at an all-time high on Tuesday, jumping over 3 percent during the day and finishing at $489.88.
The price beats the previous record close, which was $479.86.
Shares have had a crazy year, dipping more than 40 percent from the start of the year. The stock then started to recover once again around late April, when its price started to climb back up from the low $200 level.
This week, Tesla started to climb toward its highest levels ever, as it was revealed on Sunday that the company was testing driverless Robotaxis in Austin. The spike in value pushed the company’s valuation to $1.63 trillion.
Tesla Robotaxi goes driverless as Musk confirms Safety Monitor removal testing
It is the seventh-most valuable company on the market currently, trailing Nvidia, Apple, Alphabet (Google), Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta.
Shares closed up $14.57 today, up over 3 percent.
The stock has gone through a lot this year, as previously mentioned. Shares tumbled in Q1 due to CEO Elon Musk’s involvement with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which pulled his attention away from his companies and left a major overhang on their valuations.
However, things started to rebound halfway through the year, and as the government started to phase out the $7,500 tax credit, demand spiked as consumers tried to take advantage of it.
Q3 deliveries were the highest in company history, and Tesla responded to the loss of the tax credit with the launch of the Model 3 and Model Y Standard.
Additionally, analysts have announced high expectations this week for the company on Wall Street as Robotaxi continues to be the focus. With autonomy within Tesla’s sights, things are moving in the direction of Robotaxi being a major catalyst for growth on the Street in the coming year.
Elon Musk
Tesla needs to come through on this one Robotaxi metric, analyst says
“We think the key focus from here will be how fast Tesla can scale driverless operations (including if Tesla’s approach to software/hardware allows it to scale significantly faster than competitors, as the company has argued), and on profitability.”
Tesla needs to come through on this one Robotaxi metric, Mark Delaney of Goldman Sachs says.
Tesla is in the process of rolling out its Robotaxi platform to areas outside of Austin and the California Bay Area. It has plans to launch in five additional cities, including Houston, Dallas, Miami, Las Vegas, and Phoenix.
However, the company’s expansion is not what the focus needs to be, according to Delaney. It’s the speed of deployment.
The analyst said:
“We think the key focus from here will be how fast Tesla can scale driverless operations (including if Tesla’s approach to software/hardware allows it to scale significantly faster than competitors, as the company has argued), and on profitability.”
Profitability will come as the Robotaxi fleet expands. Making that money will be dependent on when Tesla can initiate rides in more areas, giving more customers access to the program.
There are some additional things that the company needs to make happen ahead of the major Robotaxi expansion, one of those things is launching driverless rides in Austin, the first city in which it launched the program.
This week, Tesla started testing driverless Robotaxi rides in Austin, as two different Model Y units were spotted with no occupants, a huge step in the company’s plans for the ride-sharing platform.
Tesla Robotaxi goes driverless as Musk confirms Safety Monitor removal testing
CEO Elon Musk has been hoping to remove Safety Monitors from Robotaxis in Austin for several months, first mentioning the plan to have them out by the end of 2025 in September. He confirmed on Sunday that Tesla had officially removed vehicle occupants and started testing truly unsupervised rides.
Although Safety Monitors in Austin have been sitting in the passenger’s seat, they have still had the ability to override things in case of an emergency. After all, the ultimate goal was safety and avoiding any accidents or injuries.
Goldman Sachs reiterated its ‘Neutral’ rating and its $400 price target. Delaney said, “Tesla is making progress with its autonomous technology,” and recent developments make it evident that this is true.
Investor's Corner
Tesla gets bold Robotaxi prediction from Wall Street firm
Last week, Andrew Percoco took over Tesla analysis for Morgan Stanley from Adam Jonas, who covered the stock for years. Percoco seems to be less optimistic and bullish on Tesla shares, while still being fair and balanced in his analysis.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) received a bold Robotaxi prediction from Morgan Stanley, which anticipates a dramatic increase in the size of the company’s autonomous ride-hailing suite in the coming years.
Last week, Andrew Percoco took over Tesla analysis for Morgan Stanley from Adam Jonas, who covered the stock for years. Percoco seems to be less optimistic and bullish on Tesla shares, while still being fair and balanced in his analysis.
Percoco dug into the Robotaxi fleet and its expansion in the coming years in his latest note, released on Tuesday. The firm expects Tesla to increase the Robotaxi fleet size to 1,000 vehicles in 2026. However, that’s small-scale compared to what they expect from Tesla in a decade.
Tesla expands Robotaxi app access once again, this time on a global scale
By 2035, Morgan Stanley believes there will be one million Robotaxis on the road across multiple cities, a major jump and a considerable fleet size. We assume this means the fleet of vehicles Tesla will operate internally, and not including passenger-owned vehicles that could be added through software updates.
He also listed three specific catalysts that investors should pay attention to, as these will represent the company being on track to achieve its Robotaxi dreams:
- Opening Robotaxi to the public without a Safety Monitor. Timing is unclear, but it appears that Tesla is getting closer by the day.
- Improvement in safety metrics without the Safety Monitor. Tesla’s ability to improve its safety metrics as it scales miles driven without the Safety Monitor is imperative as it looks to scale in new states and cities in 2026.
- Cybercab start of production, targeted for April 2026. Tesla’s Cybercab is a purpose-built vehicle (no steering wheel or pedals, only two seats) that is expected to be produced through its state-of-the-art unboxed manufacturing process, offering further cost reductions and thus accelerating adoption over time.
Robotaxi stands to be one of Tesla’s most significant revenue contributors, especially as the company plans to continue expanding its ride-hailing service across the world in the coming years.
Its current deployment strategy is controlled and conservative to avoid any drastic and potentially program-ruining incidents.
So far, the program, which is active in Austin and the California Bay Area, has been widely successful.
Tesla stock closes at all-time high on heels of Robotaxi progress
Tesla needs to come through on this one Robotaxi metric, analyst says
