StealthP3D
Well-Known Member
TSLA has never been priced for perfection. It has always been undervalued by a lot.
A year ago, I said I thought we were roughly 'fairly valued' at around $850. A few months ago, I said I thought we were fairly valued at around $950. But at all times I thought we would be worth much more in two to three years. When I said those things, I was not speaking to how much I thought TSLA was worth to me, I was guessing how much it was worth to the market. And of course, I was right because that's what it was trading at! LOL! But I was actually saying more than that. Specifically, that I thought we were close to the average price the market would pay, ie without volatility.
My point is there really is no such thing as 'fair value' with a company growing so rapidly, and that would be true even if you could magically see the financials that would be published in 3 years from the date of the valuation. A company with any given metrics, both currently and in three years' time, would still be worth different amounts to different people. The markets appetite for an investment, even one with very specific metrics, is always changing.
Personally, given Tesla's growth metrics and solid history of performance, I'm a little surprised that average price the market is willing to pay isn't a little more than it is. But that's probably because I'm closer to the subject than most of the market. I think I understand the risks and rewards of a company like Tesla better than the overall market. And you will never convince me that I'm wrong about that unless Tesla went through a three-year period with performance so poor it made the stock price today justifiable in hindsight. And I don't believe for a minute that's going to happen. But that difference between what an investor thinks will happen and what the market thinks will happen is almost entirely what determines how that investor will perform relative to the market.
I've found situations like the one we have with Tesla, when there is a large disparity between what I think is most likely to happen and what the market thinks is most likely to happen, is where the surest and highest returns are. Specifically, I think the market thinks legacy auto will 'catch up' to Tesla and be able to match their production efficiency while I think you would have to be on crack to believe that. And I can say the exact same thing about Tesla's corporate efficiency which is just a different side of the same coin. These two factors, I believe, are what guarantees Tesla's ability to continue selling every car they can make at a healthy profit far into the future. Tesla's other ventures are just a very thick frosting on the cake. I don't even like frosting, but this frosting is so thick it actually weighs more than the cake. And since that frosting is just a proxy for potential future profits, I'll take as much of it as I can get!