Investor's Corner
Wall Street thinks Tesla ($TSLA) is headed into bear territory
In advance of tomorrow’s Q4 earnings call, Tesla investors and Wall Street analysts have seldom held more conflicting views about where the stock is heading. Shares in Tesla have advanced 50% in the past 3 months, setting historic highs along the way. Based on market capitalization, Tesla is now worth just slightly less than auto manufacturers Ford and General Motors.
Some analyst think the stock will go higher still. Morgan Stanley’s Adam Jonas forecasts a price of $305 per share in the near future but many of his colleagues disagree. Bloomberg recently polled 14 analysts and found the majority of them see the stock going lower in the months ahead. The median response was $48 per share below where the stock is today. That is the most pessimistic view among Wall Street traders since Tesla went public 7 years ago and is reflected in Bloomberg’s chart below.
Of the six analysts who have updated their advice on Tesla in the month of February, none has raised the estimate. That is despite the company announcing that it would begin pilot production of the Model 3 this week, news that has been one of the triggers for the latest run up. We “see no fundamental reason for run-up,” said UBS Securities LLC analyst Colin Langan. He sent a note to his clients last week in which he projected the price of Tesla stock to fall back to$160 a share over the next 12 months.
Why the disconnect? Traditionally, market watchers pay attention to something they call the Relative Strength Index, which measures the speed and change of a stock price either up or down. In essence, it is is a tool designed to strip out the emotional component that affects all stock valuations and insulate professionals from getting caught up in the herd mentality.
If the RSI climbs above 70, that indicates a stock is “overbought.” Such a level is widely considered to be a “sell signal.” Conversely, anything below 30 is considered “oversold” and is considered a “buy signal.” Tesla’s RSI soared to 83 last week, the highest level in more than 4 years.
Tesla has a lot on its plate this year. In addition to getting the Model 3 into regular production, it is aggressively pursuing its grid scale battery storage business, expanding the Gigafactory, completing the integration of SolarCity into the business, rolling out its new Solar Roof product line, continuing the expansion of its Supercharger network, opening new stores, and building new service centers. It is also pushing into new markets in Portugal, Dubai, Taiwan, India, and Korea.
In the spring of 2016, Elon Musk predicted Tesla would have a market capitalization equal to Apple by the year 2025, or somewhere around $700 billion. Musk has never been shy about touting his projections for the future and many investors take his pronouncements as articles of faith. They see stock analysts as Luddites who just don’t “get it” when it comes to Musk and Tesla.
“Tesla is a serial capital raiser,” says Adam Jonas. “As such, its ability to sustain its operations and fundamental value is inextricably linked to the very performance of its share price, creating a self-reinforcing momentum.” Whether that “self-reinforcing momentum” will continue to propel Tesla’s stock price higher is anybody’s guess.
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.
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