Tesla Inc (TSLA)

Too much on the cowboy side for him :)  Wild valuation. His colleague wrote an interesting article, found under Insights at goodreid.com, on founders who still run their companies.

He owns GM instead.

His preference for the play on robotics -- they're rolling them out this year. Things are changing so fast on both quantum and AI, and the intersection of those 2 areas leads to robotics.

Tech hit a bottom last Monday with peak pessimism, and started to rebound last Monday. UBS upgraded TSLA today and is up 7% today. He just added shares.

They reported Q1 last week and disappointed: 385K deliveries, well below expectations, but they totaled 408K vehicles in production, increasing 13% YOY, possibly creating excess inventory and leading to cutting prices. Also, energy storage was 8.8 gigawatt hours deployed vs. the expected 14.4, very disappointing. That said, Tesla has seen auto deliveries decline for 2 years, after peaking in 2023-4 while earnings peaked in 2022 at $4.07 EPS before falling 23%, 22% and another 31% in the next three years, nearly 60%. over 5 years, shares are up 53%. Tesla needs show growth in another area, robotaxis, to inspire shareholders, but there's no indication of sales or progress in this area. With their car business deteriorating, investors are starting to wonder if this is a dangerous stock, especially with Musk taking SpaceX public in the future. But that could trigger a sell-off of Tesla shares to buy SpaceX--right now, Tesla is the only way to invest in Musk, which is scarcity value, but that will end when SpaceX goes public. Until there's progress in robotaxis, Tesla shares will continue to fall.

It is below its 200 day moving average and at 185 times earnings it is too expensive, even though there is potential growth. Lots of competition. He has never owned it.

There are better places to be.

Musk is telling investors to focus on robo-taxis and humanoid robots but there is lots of competition in the world in both areas. However, positive sentiment is driving the stock up and Musk is probably the best stock promoter in the world.

It reported last week. Musk says its future is cyber cabs and robots. Shares fell that next day. Their capex was higher than expected. Bulls may be more excited about SpaceX becoming public later this year

Hard to know what the future holds for this company. Taking gigantic bets on robotics and power generation, and spending a lot of $$. Valuation is ~200x PE!! A lot of this fantastic news that may or may not happen in the future seems to be already priced into the stock. Elon Musk is an amazing storyteller. 

He won't buy for clients right now. He doesn't like to buy on unknown what-ifs 20 years in the future. We'll have to see how the Chinese EVs work out. But if it came down to a reasonable valuation, he'd be interested.