Stock price when the opinion was issued
Shares are cut in half from highs. Bulls say that Trump's close relationship with Musk should give Tesla a big advantage in self-driving cars and robots. But Tesla's core car business has collapsed and tariffs will be awful. Is the most expensive Mag 7 stock, trading at 87x PE. He can't trust their estimates--their car business is in such bad shape.
Musk is a remarkable entrepreneur, but there's a lot of promotion involved. Right, particularly in the US, the people driving Teslas aren't happy, given DOGE and the White House. We see the backlash with protests. If Tesla survives 10 years, there will probably be a lot of revenue from self-driving cards, but Tesla has to get there. The brand has fallen out of favour. If things go badly in the White House, it would reflect more badly on the company, because Musk is so tied to the White House.
As a car company, never made sense to pay the demanding multiple. So an investor has to put faith in the technology side, and he's not comfortable with that. Musk is in the news big time, and he's not gaining any friends. International blowback against TSLA and Musk, reputational risk. Sales numbers weak.
He reduced his position given macro risk, though the company has done a fine job navigating tariffs. He believes in their self-driving technology, which will be one of the biggest transition in coming years. As for the Musk boycott and falling Tesla sales around the world: Musk has always been controversial, and he says he's returning to Tesla full time.
$1.8 billion a year is how much cash they are burning through. That is not good. Also, there are over 30 automobile manufacturers globally. He doesn’t like buying a company with that much competition. Even their competitors are bringing out electric cars. Lithium is very poisonous and the batteries are in the bottom of these cars, so what is going to happen to the batteries after they have finished with their useful life.