- Tesla is in uncharted territory now that it appears to have shed its aura of invincibility. Punters find themselves in the dark about the stock’s outlook, with Morgan Stanley telling clients the price could just as easily triple to $800 in the coming months as it could drop to $200.
Late last month, Simon Hale landed in hot water with his compliance department at Wellington Altus Private Wealth. Due to the sharp rally in Tesla, his holdings of the EV giant had become too valuable relative to the portfolio managed by the Montreal-based institutional investor, and it needed trimming to diversify risk.
“That’s no problem any more,” Hale glumly told fellow investors during an online discussion last week. The stock, beaten down over the past fortnight, had just plunged a further 15% in one session, solving his quandary without the portfolio manager ever having to lift a finger.
CEO Elon Musk’s attempt to replicate Argentine president Javier Milei by cutting government spending with a chainsaw has sparked a wave of outcry across the United States, as has his emphatic embrace of Germany’s far-right AfD party.
Musk is now trying to rally his troops’ morale. But the backlash has been so fierce that it’s unclear whether the stock can recover the aura of infallibility it first earned following 2020’s stratospheric rally, when the CEO could swiftly silence doubts with a bold prediction or two.
It’s led to declining sales, violent protests, petty vandalism and even outright arson.
In the process, Tesla is now down 9% from election day, when it initially launched a furious rally to touch an all-time high in mid-December, and a staggering 46% since Trump took office.
Musk’s fans regularly convene on his X platform to share info about all things Tesla, but lately these pep talks sound more like group therapy sessions where small stockholders affirm why they are right to buy more shares at prices where board directors, including chairwoman Robyn Denholm, have already sold a collective $100 million recently.
Hale then dropped the boom on others listening: Jewish investors were pressuring him to sell their Tesla stock.
“They really didn’t like what happened in terms of the salute,” he confided. “I’m hearing this over and over again from wealthy clients, and clients in Europe—that Elon is supporting the AfD.”
‘Tesla shame’ means this time, the slump feels different
In a way, it all feels familiar, as Tesla investors have been here before.
After the Twitter acquisition in October 2022, when fears persisted Musk might cover losses at the social media company by liquidating Tesla stock, the price dropped all the way down to $100 a share.
A second hefty drop occurred just this time last year, after it had become completely clear that Tesla was, in fact, a growth stock that had stopped growing.
Yet each time Musk could calm collective nerves and put a floor under the price.
First he promised he was done selling Tesla stock through 2024 (a pledge he kept), while later he accelerated the timetable for the launch of a new entry level model to meet investor demands (there the jury is still out).
Now, there are so many persisting concerns, not to mention a growing sense of “Tesla shame” among owners, that there’s no easy silver bullet solution.
“While worries around the Tesla brand have been on investor minds for the last three years, this time feels different,” Emmanuel Rosner of Wolfe Research told clients.
Tesla drivers are afraid to leave their cars unattended
Tesla no longer has this nimbus of infallibility it acquired during the pandemic-era craze when everything Musk did was magic.
At the time, he even managed to skilfully skirt the semiconductor crunch that ground large parts of the auto industry to a halt. But now, Musk himself is the source of the crisis.
Just before Hale took the mike to commiserate over the plunge in the stock, Tesla owner and investor Herbert Ong confessed in the same online forum that many of his friends in the Pacific Northwest were now hesitant to be seen in their vehicle.
“Some of them have said ‘I will not choose to drive my Cybertruck downtown Seattle anymore for the time being.’ They’re afraid,” Ong admitted.
The company did not respond to a request from Fortune for comment.
But it’s difficult to see how it can convince new buyers to get behind the wheel of a Tesla so long as current drivers are unwilling to leave their parked car unattended for fear of reprisals.
Tesla shares could be cheap if you zoom out all the way to 2030
Bulls are now at a total loss as to where the stock is headed.
Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas literally told clients in a research note last week that while it could soar to $800 within the next 12 months, it could just as easily sink to $200.
Instead, the best way to think about Tesla is to zoom out. If you look at it on a long enough timeline, it’s cheap, with shares only valued 19 times forecast 2030 earnings, Jonas insisted.
Still, the sell-side analyst needed to give his clients at least some inkling about how it should trade in the meantime, so he covered his bets.
“We expect the key drivers of the stock will continue to include a wide scope of forces ranging from commercial, macro, geopolitical, technological, strategic and management specific,” he wrote. In other words, everything short of the Earth’s gravitational pull could move the price.
Wolfe’s Emmanuel Rosner argued he couldn’t be certain of the direction in the coming weeks either—not because there were far too many factors tugging at the stock, but rather just the opposite: “At this point, the company is in the midst of a catalyst vacuum.”
‘I don’t think it’s a great thing to alienate half the population’
In the meantime, even Musk’s biggest fans are taking some amount of money off the table.
Asset manager Ron Baron continues to believe in the entrepreneur, but he too was forced to sell Tesla last month at the direct behest of his clients.
Now, his firm only has about two-thirds of the stock it originally held, which he bought a decade ago for an average of $11- $12.
“Everyone has to deal with certain clientele,” Ron Baron told CNBC, quickly adding he did not sell any from his own personal holdings.
While he blamed the sales drop on the recent production shutdown, he permitted himself the wish that Musk would be a “little less visible” amid the controversy.
In between praise, he snuck in a message to the CEO: “I don’t think it’s a great thing to alienate half the population.”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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