I personally expect Tesla to continue to be a fabulous car company but these other segments seem unlikely for various reasons.
Tesla was not incorporated yesterday, they are a 20 years old company, still they are in the making promises phase.
In the same timeframe Amazon completely disrupted the way we buy things, Microsoft put a PC on every desk, Google became the way the world searches for information and Facebook revolutionized the way we communicate.
I think it's time to admit to ourselves that this guy is just a wannabe influencer/politician.
Among the 500 companies in the S&P500 if Tesla disappeared tomorrow it would be the one whose demise would be felt the least by the American consumer, that shouldn't come as a surprise because frankly speaking the target demographic of Tesla and its CEO aren't consumers who buy products to improve the quality of their own lives.
It's a weird mix of financial speculators, cryptobros, people who feel the need to be part of something bigger than themselves, and virtue signalers.
It's a pity that such experiment cannot be performed, Walmart sold 600B worth of products last year, Amazon 400B, Berkshire has 800B worth of insurance premiums AUM. Diappear those companies and then let's see if people are still so eager to pay attention to mr. Musk and his absurd claims and social media trolling/bullying.
The valuation is questionable but saying he is just a wannabe politician / influencer is factually incorrect.
Sure in Bel Air is really important to own a Tesla, just like (if not more) than the car brands mentioned in my handle...
> substantial real revenues
How much of that is credits?
> growing at a remarkable rate
A company incorporated 20 years ago growing at a remarkable rate either implies incompetence in its administration up to now, or a dishonest scheme put in place to artificially simulate "a remarkable rate of growth" right now.
Companies with similar access to talent and capital simply came to dominate their industry in the same timeframe (Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Salesforce, Intel, HP...)
Globally speaking what % of cars sold are Teslas? 1 or 2 % ? Tesla and Musk dominate the newscycle of the financial press, the tabloids and the blogsphere but out there, in the real world they are essentially nonexistent. It seems like the dictionary definition of an influencer to me.
- Total revenue: $18,756M
- Gross profit: $5,460M
- Total regulatory credits: $679M
So to answer your question, about 4% of their revenue is credits. It’s been tiny compared to automotive revenue for at least a year. So we can stop perpetuating that little myth.
0: https://tesla-cdn.thron.com/static/IOSHZZ_TSLA_Q1_2022_Updat...
1.2M is about 1% of that. This company gets the press of Apple, Microsoft or Google (it's even more than that, it's really a cult), and it peaked at a valuation similar to such companies which have total dominance in their respective markets (Microsoft also got in trouble because the dominance was achieved too soon and without having to lobby D.C. on the way there)
Tesla market share essentially amounts to nothing. People who are able to reason can understand that when the discrepancy between financial/press clout and presence in the real world is so big, there is either something broken in markets or fraud on a big scale.
Fraud was already uncovered at Tesla and the company and its CEO are constantly battling lawsuits.
It's an exercise in stock promotion more than a car company, the price of the stock is the only KPI that matters at Tesla, much like the approval rating is the only KPI that matters in the WH.
Like Trump, Musk found that it's more effective for his wallet to focus all his efforts on pumping that KPI via cult of personality as opposed to doing a good job at layer zero and let the KPI fall wherever it may.
[0] https://policyadvice.net/insurance/insights/us-auto-sales-st...
Musk sued to gain control of Tesla in 2002.
He's been talking and rambling about the future™ for 20 years now. 20 years, all while pocketing billions of government money.
Now you are saying 2040, next year you'll say 2050, the year after that 2060.
In the meantime he's getting paid hundreds of billions of dollars right now, not in the future™. It's typical of cults to extract money from believers right now in order to compensate the cult leader for work that he will complete 30 or 40 years into the future™.
It's a scam. Amazon was built in 20 years and it also needed to deal with building factories in the real world, unions, logistics etc. Did so without govt. money and without constant pumps and equity raises. It's there selling 400B dollars worth of products every year.
The guy who built it stepped down and the company is still there because its so solid that it can stand alone now. You know as well as I that if Musk OD's on one of his drugs of choice the whole scheme would collapse because the cult only has a reason to exist as long as the cult leader is there to show the way forward ....into the future™
Exactly. Tesla is selling $54b at 71% YoY revenue growth, while Amazon’s $470b is 22% growth.
Amazon has total domination in the enterprise cloud business and is the largest player in online retail.
But you know in the world of contraries , winning is a huge liability because it means you arrived at the end of the road, whereas failing to achieve more than 1.5% of market share in 20 years is a huge success because it allows people to daydream of infinite curves which go up & to the right forever after slouching for 20 years /s
If you are good, you are good from the get go.
How many lives are gonna be disrupted if a company/human disappeared overnight? And how much the quality of life of the population is gonna go down the sink?
In each and every case as the companies you mentioned the answer is a lot on both counts.
Tesla, Porsche (35B) , the brands I have in my handle (Ferrari , McLaren) , Lamborghini, Gulfstream, Bombardier, Gucci, Sea-Ray....the answer is: not a much on both counts for all of them.
Nobody cries for the toys of the rich, not even the rich because they can easily pivot towards other toys
$17B in Q1. With 80% YoY growth, and new factories able to supply the growing demand, it is within reason to expect $30B profit in Q4 (or Q1 2022 if you'd prefer). They are trading at 10x multiple on annual PROFIT.
Toyota's profit last quarter was $6.8B with a market cap of $280B, and not growing. So they have annual profit of $28B, also trading at 10x multiple on annual profit.
Makes tesla look like a good buy to me.
Not saying Tesla will do the same but transition to EVs will clearly fundamentally change auto market.
The hail Mary is self driving.
This feels a lot like the statements people made about Apple at the start of the smartphone revolution. Plus they’ve had a long time already to beat Teslas at EVs - if they haven’t by now why should they in future?
tesla is the iphone of cars. minimalist, performant, fun to drive. not to mention the no other car company is building or has a supercharging network. GM and Ford are the blackberry of EVs
Their battery tech isn't unique (and not theirs entirely either). Everything except the infotainment system is "simple" (in relative terms).
I'm not saying they're not great, but that the stock is expensive
The differentiating factor for Tesla has never been their battery tech or physical car quality. It's somewhat like Apple in that the combination of decent (but not the best) hardware and software brought together in a cohesive way creates something better than the individual parts. You're buying an "experience", which people often make fun of but ultimately I feel is more representative of what customers are looking for than looking at pure specs of the car. And a lot of the "experience" is powered by software or by custom silicon or other non-car things.
Android still can't compete with Apple in terms of the polish and cohesiveness of the product despite Google and Samsung being juggernauts, and I think Tesla vs. Ford/GM/etc. is much the same. Just pick up a Galaxy S22 and use it for a bit. The apps feel like a patchwork of different UX's, different ways of using the phone, and different modules that don't talk to each other.
Correct me if I'm wrong somewhere, but having 20% of a market vs 1% is a significant difference.
It's also quite more approachable for people to spend on a premium phone than a premium car, since a premium car costs more than what many "westerners" make in a year while an iPhone is less than a "westerners" monthly salary.
My point was that people don't buy BMW over Mercedes because they have 20 more horsepower. And if it does come down to brand, as you said, there are a lot of very powerful brands, like BMW or Mercedes that have been playing the brand game longer than the founder of Tesla has been alive. I don't think I would put my money on Tesla if winning will come down to brand.
Time will tell, I have a lot more faith in Tesla that the legacy automakers at this point, if that changes, I will sell. If my 5 year lead is correct, I think we will see level-5 FSD by then anyways.
It's not adding value as at that time it would have been a gamble and not a obvious thing.
I also still don't understand Tesla share price. Sure they are more than a EV company but they still struggle with there Tesla roofs.
So why would Tesla be more worth than all car companies combined? Tesla doesn't just create a new market. They still need to replace others.