Tesla’s stock price recently surged past $1,000. it has since fallen back slightly, but I have no doubt it shall return. The last few months have been a roller-coaster for TSLA stock holders. What can it all mean? Is the company now over-valued? or is this actually the market catching up with reality?
It always helps to get some of the big important numbers out there as a basis to analyze this sort of thing. Numbers are always open to interpretation, but you still need them…
- In 2019 Tesla produced 367,500 vehicles. source.
- The market cap of the company is currently $180 Billion.
- The automotive gross margin is approximately 25%
- YoY revenue growth is 38%
If you look at the number of cars Tesla makes, its still quite a niche player. How can it possibly be worth the same as Toyota, or SEVEN times the value of the ford motor company? How is this a sensible valuation? Here are some points to consider:
- Tesla has decent profits on each car
Teslas automotive margin is actually REALLY good, and its been growing too, from 20% a year ago to 25% today. How? Tesla do NOT advertise. That already saves them a fortune. They do NOT have any middlemen (you buy online, or in store, direct from tesla), which cuts out a whole other bunch of middlemen, and tesla have such a reputation for good tech that they can attract top talent without exorbitant salaries. The promise of tesla stock is worth way more to potential senior hires than any actual cash anyway.
FWIW Fords gross margin has varied between 18% and 12% over the last 14 years. Thats ford, one of the biggest car companies on earth, and one of the oldest, yet they aren’t as good at making profit from a car as Tesla…
Plus Tesla is the first car company to make actual money from software. The FSD (full-self-driving) hardware is in every new car (they don’t use LIDAR so its cheap), and you can upgrade your car after purchase to enable FSD or in some cases extra range or speed. Thats pure 100% profit.
A culture of constant re-investment and expansion has meant the company has not posted a full year profit yet (although it has multiple sequential quarters of profitability. Expect that to change very very soon, probably in a few months.
- Tesla is growing like crazy
The global car market is in real trouble, but the company that is not only bucking the trend, but seemingly accelerating into space (literally) is tesla. check out production:
Note that Tesla is selling every car it makes. These are not cars made to sit on showroom forecourts for months hoping someone walks buy. There are waiting lists for these cars all around the world.
Remember that its PROFIT in the FUTURE that determines a company valuation. Ford has historically made a LOT of relatively unprofitable ICE (internal combustion engine) cars that suddenly people don’t want. Thats not a good thing, but more of a liability. Hundreds of thousands of employees, and many factories designed and trained to make internal combustion engines are basically a stranded asset (worthless). Ford is well placed to continue breeding horses just as the automobile has been invented.
Note also that the VAST majority of Tesla’s output is from a single car factory in Freemont, an ex GM/Toyota plant for ICE vehicles. Their first dedicated EV-factory in china is currently ramping up, so expect rapid growth. Plus they are already building the 3rd car factory in Berlin. A fourth is expected soon in Texas. This company has only just got started…
- Tesla has zero competition
Fancy an electric Audi? you can get $20,000 knocked off the price of a new e-tron, a supposed tesla-killer that nobody wants. Or maybe you want a jaguar I-pace? Both of these cars were heralded as the cars that would crush Tesla. Both are relative flops.
Even the chevy bolt, a car that GM LOSES money on, is no real competition.
- Tesla dominates in a rapidly growing market segment
Electric cars are the exception to the declining car industry, in terms of growth. Would you want to be the biog player in this rapidly accelerating market, or a dinosaur left at the top of the crumbling mess that is ICE cars? Dieselgate was the first shot-across-the-bows, but the experience of clean air post-covid19 and the looming nightmare of climate change shows that there is no future for ICE cars. Countries all over the world have already set dates to phase out ICE sales. The leading car companies of the future will be electric car companies first and foremost.
People always talk about Tesla as a car company, but thats similar to how amazon was a bookstore. Tesla is a transportation and energy/software company, whose current main seller is a car. Tesla energy is a little-appreciated but growing part of the business, and Teslas solar roof tile product is finally starting to ramp up. This diversifies the company and enable it to adjust to changes in demand across sectors.
Software is the real wild card, which brings us on to the topic of….
People do not generally appreciate the HUGE lead Tesla has over every other company on earth in the field of self driving vehicles. Everybody else is using HD maps and local geo-fencing, or LIDAR, neither of which actually scale. You can get a REALLY cool reliable little bubble car that drives around a geo-fenced and controlled environment like a retirement village right now, that will work amazingly 99% of the time. Lots of different companies are showing off stuff like this, as a way to grab the cash of ill-informed venture capitalists. Tesla is not trying to hype up specific cases, its driving to solve autonomy in the general case, globally, in all conditions, 100% of the time, and its getting there.
The difference between 99% autonomy and 100% doesn’t sound like much but its game changing. 100% means no steering wheel, no driver, and no worries. 99% means basically very good cruise control. My Autopilot v1 Tesla model S is VERY good on highways. It makes long drives safer and way more relaxing. Its not autonomous. When its 100%, I can get drunk in restaurants. I can watch a movie or read a book on long drives.
A 2 hour commute is currently a nightmare, but when you can literally be asleep, or reading, or playing games, or working in the car… its not so bad. This will change where people live and work, and how they work. Imagine Uber, but safer, with nobody you have to talk to (or tip), and at one quarter the cost. You could play games/stream music/watch TV in your uber, because nobody else is in it…and thats safer for lone women too. Autonomy at 100% is a MASSIVE big deal financially, and there is a VERY good chance Tesla gets there before anybody else and just eats Ubers breakfast, lunch and all other meals.
Why?
Waymos autonomous cars have driven 20 million miles. In one country. AFAIK in one state. Woohoo. Tesla were at 2 BILLION in November last year. Don’t forget every car they make has autopilot hardware, and the rate they make them is accelerating. Some people value waymo at 30 billion. Lolz.
So to sum up, I don’t KNOW the true value of Tesla, because the companies output and capabilities are accelerating so fast its hard to pin a target on it. Given the actual number of cars shipped, it seems a high valuation, but that number will change a lot in the next year or so, and as EV incentives come out of the EU and the UK, and ICE sales continue to plummet, I can see more people seeing a $1,000 TSLA stock price as actually quite a bargain.
BTW the companies stock has tripled since the last time I blogged about why its a good buy.