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With Tesla's Sales Slumping, Its Valuation Looks Ludicrous.
236 sats \ 6 comments \ @0xbitcoiner 24 Jul 2025 Stacker_Stocks
As of market close on July 23, Tesla’s share price was down 18 percent this year. While that may sound bad for a company of Tesla’s stature, things could actually be worse – much worse. Considering the divisiveness of CEO Elon Musk’s political adventures, the company’s ongoing sales slump and the headwinds it faces in the form of tariffs, expiring tax credits and Chinese competition, Tesla’s current valuation actually looks ludicrously high.

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59 sats \ 1 reply \ @BlokchainB 24 Jul 2025

Yeah it does but when has Tesla traded on good value?

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135 sats \ 0 replies \ @justin_shocknet 24 Jul 2025

I've come to immediately dismiss anyone that talks about valuation, they aren't investors, they're just trying to arbitrage time decay. Value-trapped mid-curves that are content to dividend harvest and under-perform the S&P/inflation.

The future has nothing to do with today's valuation. Tesla is a particularly interesting case given the asymmetry of their pipeline.

Its been ~5 years since I worked on one of the first megapack-grid integrations, felt like a hackathon project then but I saw the light... and now its already starting to scale, no one is going to care about Model 3 sales very soon.

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21 sats \ 3 replies \ @fiatbad 24 Jul 2025

I think their robots are going to be a massively larger market than their vehicles. I think this is a blind spot for most investors right now.

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0 sats \ 2 replies \ @Turdinthepunchbowl 24 Jul 2025

What makes you think the robot market is going to be larger for Tesla? Genuinely wish to know.

  1. Do you believe it's people wanting a robot helper in their household, or do you believe it's industrial applications that will drive that growth?
  2. Do you think the brand reputation changes that have impact on vehicle sales will not translate to future robotics business?
  3. What advantage do you believe Tesla will have in either of the markets (household/personal or commercial/industrial) vs competition?

I do wish to hear the case for it's valuation based on future potential growth.

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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @fiatbad 25 Jul 2025
  1. Mostly industrial applications. But, both, really. This is similar to the introduction of the smart-phone. It's something completely new. Something that people will wonder how we ever lived without this in our lives before it existed. Something everyone will want and even need. People tend to under-estimate these kinds of investments. The iPhone wasn't taken seriously for a long time after its launch. People made fun of it. Now, everyone "needs" one.
  2. Not at all. These are short-term issues, mostly due to Elon himself. Did Apple go under after Steve Jobs died? No. Tesla is positioned to do far greater things than Apple is. Elon won't be around forever. Tesla will be around longer. (Bitcoin will be around even longer)
  3. This is the risk. I haven't evaluated the competition well enough. It seems like Tesla has a much larger head-start and bigger moat. The AI that's been trained from their vehicles should, theoretically, be useful for industrial/household robots as well. If they don't mess it up, they should be able to get to market with far superior products, much faster than their competitors. I can't say for sure. We'll see.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Turdinthepunchbowl 25 Jul 2025

Thanks for the response. Here are my thoughts. Sorry for the long wall of text, hope it makes sense.

  1. from a household perspective, I envision a future where less people actually buy/own/maintain a household robot helper...instead you pay a company like a cleaner to come in and those are bots. Which while cool, would mean a smaller addressable market than a bot in every home which is the stated goal. Maybe I'm different and it's obviously one person account, I don't even want a Roomba vacuum or ring door bell, I'm probably not gonna want a human sized bot walking around haha.

1a) This addresses thoughts on point 1 and 3. From an industrial/commercial application, I think they are maybe way behind, and perhaps too broadly focused. Industrial process are highly specialized. You can't necessarily use the same hardware/software/AI to pick apples in a grove as you would manufacture things or auto sort/retrieve parts in a warehouse. There are large and established companies already in this space. Check out ABB out of Switzerland, Boston Dynamics, or even AutoStore an automated sort and retrieval for distribution. It's a crowded space with real life applications already in use. I don't pay too close attention, but I've only ever heard of Optimus and not other ambitions of Tesla robotics. If Optimus is it, then they may carve out a niche in household, but Boston Dynamics also has done some impressive humanoid robot things. Can't forget whatever the Chinese create either. So I'm of the opinion this is not the game changer for their valuation it's believed to be and maybe more difficult/crowded than you think.

  1. While it can never be exactly proven, a huge amount of Tesla valuation is tied to Musk himself. That premium gives them access to capital to do massive gambles like the cyber truck/cab/solar city/Optimus. But the shine is wearing off a bit with his behaviors and external focus (not just with DOGE, but SpaceX, Boring, xAI, etc). With revenues/profits shrinking, that Musk premium could reduce dramatically. I see the parallel to Steve Jobs, but there was a time the board would have ousted Jobs. That same control is not there as the board would never oust Musk. Tim Cook came in after Jobs and is as vanilla as it comes to keep the ship steady. Apple is also hugely profitable. Net income of like $95 billion with a PE ratio of 33. Tesla on the other hand net income last year was $7 billion with a PE ratio of 183. So I guess what I'm getting at it Tim Cook could take over from Jobs without issue because the valuation of Apple was not hugely tied to Jobs and the business was massively profitable, just needed a steady hand to keep the train going, didn't need new game changers to justify the valuation. Tesla is quite different from that where Musk is as much of the brand as the products, but the valuation needs game changing innovations to justify. So if Musk left, tons of that value is gone with it, and much of the things Musk developed outside of Tesla (Rockets/AI/etc) Tesla need to either lease from his other companies or will eventually need to pay/but those companies.
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