Investor's Corner
Tesla is disrupting the auto industry just like Salesforce disrupted software: Nomura
Tesla shares (NASDAQ:TSLA) are seeing some recovery on Wednesday amidst a cautious yet optimistic outlook from Nomura Instinet, which recently initiated its coverage of the electric car maker. In a note on Tuesday, the financial firm’s analysts dubbed Tesla as a “true disruptor” of the auto industry, being a company that is forcing legacy carmakers to develop competitive electric vehicles.
Nomura Instinet analyst Christopher Eberle gave Tesla a “Neutral” rating, which is the equivalent of a “Hold.” A price target of $300 per share was also listed for the company. Eberle explained his rationale behind his stance on Tesla, stating that the electric car maker will likely see another volatile year this 2019. “We are cautious near term, as we navigate the breakneck pace of Tesla’s global expansion,” he said.
Despite his Neutral rating on the company, Eberle nevertheless highlighted Tesla’s massive potential. The analyst likened Tesla to some of the tech industry’s biggest players, noting that the Silicon Valley-based company is pioneering electric cars the same way that Salesforce.com Inc. pioneered the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business model.
“Similar to some of the software greats’ disruption of enterprise hardware, Tesla is a true disruptor of the automotive industry, in our view. It forces legacy combustion engine behemoths to scramble to develop competing products without cannibalizing their cash flow machines—keeping them comfortably at a distinct disadvantage, similar to what Salesforce did when it pioneered the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business model,” the Nomura analyst said.
Eberle also likened Tesla to Apple Inc., since the electric car maker’s vehicles are a product of vertical integration. “We see similarities to Apple’s disruption of the handset market (iPhone) and liken the Supercharger network and over-the-air (OTA) software updates to the iOS and iTunes ecosystem. The SaaS model will flip Tesla from customer service laggard to a leader, in our view. Tesla is fundamentally changing not only the way cars are built but also how they are bought and sold. To us, this is similar to what Apple did with the advent of the iPhone, Amazon did with books (and eventually everything), Netflix did with video, and Salesforce did with software,” the analyst wrote.
The Nomura analyst’s points highlight a notable and unique advantage that is practically exclusive to Tesla owners today. With the company’s expansive Supercharger Network, long, comfortable road trips are possible, and with free over-the-air software updates, vehicles literally get better the older they get. These are advantages that non-Tesla owners do not get to experience today, at least not to the same degree. Eberle’s comments about Tesla ushering a change among traditional auto also ring true, as shown in the release of premium electric vehicles such as the Jaguar I-PACE and the Audi e-tron.
Tesla stock remains divisive in Wall Street. Among the 30 analysts covering the company, 12 currently consider TSLA shares a “Buy,” 7 rate the stock a “Hold,” and 11 consider Tesla a “Sell,” according to FactSet. The average price target for the electric car maker is currently at $322.29, which is 18.4% higher than Tuesday’s closing price of $272.31.
As of writing, Tesla shares are trading 0.86% at $274.66 per share.
Disclosure: I have no ownership in shares of TSLA and have no plans to initiate any positions within 72 hours.
Investor's Corner
Tesla gets its latest short from Michael Burry: ‘Happy it jumped back to this level’
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.”
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.
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.
Investor's Corner
SpaceX gets initial stock coverage from Tesla’s biggest bull
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
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:
“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.
Elon Musk
Tesla Phone? Not quite, but close: analyst
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.
Would you buy a Tesla phone ? pic.twitter.com/aaTwvvIJit
— Tesla Owners Silicon Valley (@teslaownersSV) October 6, 2023
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.
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.
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.