Surreal - Tesla’s market cap is now bigger than Ford’s was at its peak

[Cuddles]

Plenty of companies spent years building market share before turning a profit. Amazon might be a company you've heard of? No real profit for nearly a decade, now nearly a trillion dollar market cap. Would you have assigned zero value to the company in 1999-2001?

BTW, Tesla has had 5 profitable quarters.

As much as I dislike Musk, Sig has a point here. You wouldn't think it, but Amazon broke that mold (or maybe some other companies prior)

 

[Saltynuts]

They have no value. The comps on the company are basically fabricated and as far as I remember they have never turned a profit.

Here's a big thinking question: how can a company have a value greater than 0 if they've never been profitable? Tesla is spearheading the IPO darlings and it looks remarkably like 1999-2001 again.

If... they expect to be profitable in the future?

 

[Saltynuts]

Plenty of companies spent years building market share before turning a profit. Amazon might be a company you've heard of? No real profit for nearly a decade, now nearly a trillion dollar market cap. Would you have assigned zero value to the company in 1999-2001?

BTW, Tesla has had 5 profitable quarters.

This, lol.

 

[bh_prop]

Plenty of companies spent years building market share before turning a profit. Amazon might be a company you've heard of? No real profit for nearly a decade, now nearly a trillion dollar market cap. Would you have assigned zero value to the company in 1999-2001?

BTW, Tesla has had 5 profitable quarters.

I used to call it amazon.bomb back in those days. The higher their sales, the higher their losses. Who knew they would eventually come to dominate e-commerce

 

[Sig]

I used to call it amazon.bomb back in those days. The higher their sales, the higher their losses. Who knew they would eventually come to dominate e-commerce

I will be the first to admit I had exactly the same feeling about them back then. I'm glad I didn't have enough money to put a short on them! Learning moment for me.

 

[Specterx]

I used to call it amazon.bomb back in those days. The higher their sales, the higher their losses. Who knew they would eventually come to dominate e-commerce

Comparisons between TSLA and AMZN aren't very useful. AMZN's strong performance over the last few years isn't due to the e-commerce business, but rather almost entirely to AWS - which certainly wasn't part of the investment thesis back in the 90s or early 2000s. From 1999-2009 the stock didn't advance at all, on net.

It's as though TSLA bounces between 200 and 500 straight through 2030 as the car business generates razor-thin, highly volatile profits, then explodes to 5000 after Elon's latest pivot to genetically engineered cybernetic sex slaves turns out to be a roaring success. Only a fool would pat themselves on the back for having made a wise, far-sighted investment back in 2015.

 

[Sig]

Comparisons between TSLA and AMZN aren't very useful. AMZN's strong performance over the last few years isn't due to the e-commerce business, but rather almost entirely to AWS - which certainly wasn't part of the investment thesis back in the 90s or early 2000s. From 1999-2009 the stock didn't advance at all, on net.

It's as though TSLA bounces between 200 and 500 straight through 2030 as the car business generates razor-thin, highly volatile profits, then explodes to 5000 after Elon's latest pivot to genetically engineered cybernetic sex slaves turns out to be a roaring success. Only a fool would pat themselves on the back for having made a wise, far-sighted investment back in 2015.

Actually the thesis is almost identical. For Tesla the cars pay the bills for the battery and battery technology for electricity markets, and the potential size of electricity storage markets dwarf the size of electric car markets. I actually work in the electricity markets side of things and interact with that part of Tesla quite a bit. As a result I'm pretty skeptical that they'll pull that part of the thesis off because operationally they're a complete shitshow and Elon doesn't grasp operations or even the importance of operations. But the thesis itself is quite sound and involves minimal cybernetic sex slave activity.

 

[ironchef]

Plenty of companies spent years building market share before turning a profit. Amazon might be a company you've heard of? No real profit for nearly a decade, now nearly a trillion dollar market cap. Would you have assigned zero value to the company in 1999-2001?

I did and regret that ever since. I am going to regret not owning TSLA.
Old dog can't learn new tricks.

 

[luisHK]

But the thesis itself is quite sound and involves minimal cybernetic sex slave activity.

That´s a disgrace. Selling Tsla.

 

[Specterx]

Actually the thesis is almost identical. For Tesla the cars pay the bills for the battery and battery technology for electricity markets, and the potential size of electricity storage markets dwarf the size of electric car markets. I actually work in the electricity markets side of things and interact with that part of Tesla quite a bit. As a result I'm pretty skeptical that they'll pull that part of the thesis off because operationally they're a complete shitshow and Elon doesn't grasp operations or even the importance of operations. But the thesis itself is quite sound and involves minimal cybernetic sex slave activity.

What I'm talking about are folks looking in the rear-view mirror at AMZN's 50x return over a decade, and drawing a lazy comparison between the two businesses to suggest TSLA stock might do something similar - while ignoring AMZN's years of langushing performance from 2000-2010 (a bearish bet in 2000-01 would have paid off handsomely), plus the totally unforeseen emergence of AWS as a major driver of recent performance. See a prior poster's comment "who knew they would eventually come to dominate e-commerce" - well, I've had an Amazon account since 1999, and in my mind they've been pretty much synonymous with e-commerce over that whole period. It's really not what drove AMZNs gigantic outperformance over the last decade and especially the last five years.

When it comes to TSLA, I think we can say that their advance into and dominance of various industries which at the moment hardly exist, is already well and fully priced in - and as you point out, Elon is a carnival barker with a gigantic ego rather than a heads-down operations guy or manager, creating massive extra risk that these speculative future ventures will fall flat.