Tesla shares have slumped in recent weeks, osing 26% of their value between a record high in late January and its closing price Friday. But at least one analyst sees better times ahead — much, much better.
Ark Invest, run by the influential Cathie Wood, expects Tesla shares to reach at least $3,000 by 2025. That’s a rise of more than 350% from Friday’s close — and more than double Ark’s own $1,400 price target it set last year.
In fact, even in the worst-case “bear” scenario, Ark thinks Tesla shares have an absolute bottom of $1,500 for 2025, analyst Tasha Keeney wrote in a note Friday.
Shares of Tesla (TSLA) were up more than 6% to $697 in midday trading Monday.
Ark has changed its price target so drastically from last year, Kenney wrote, because the firm increased its assumptions for Tesla’s ability to efficiently use its capital to finance its ambitious growth plans. Ark is now also factoring in gains it expects Tesla to reap from selling car insurance to its customers in some states.
Keeney also wrote about an upcoming “robo-taxi” ride hailing service that Musk has promised, saying Ark also now believes that there is a 50% chance that Tesla will be able to achieve fully autonomous driving by 2025 — and that such a service would add $160 billion in annual profits by 2025.
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But other analysts who are critics of Tesla were quick to criticize Ark’s analysis, saying it didn’t take into account the cost of the growth that it is projecting for Tesla.
“It seems Ark believes Tesla will have $300 billion to $700 billion in 2025 revenues (vs. $31.5 billion in 2020), with no new debt and no equity issuance,” said Gordon Johnson of GLJ Research, and a frequent critic. “Given everyone is talking about Ark’s price target, the assumptions in Ark’s model should be heavily scrutinized. When we did a bit … a picture emerges of a potentially flawed/misinformed model, in our opinion.”
Tesla shares have been facing pressure because of increased competition. Established automakers including Volkswagen (VLKPF), General Motors (GM) and Ford (F) have made new pushes into electric vehicles.
While Tesla is the clear leader in electric vehicle sales, with 500,000 cars sold last year, Volkswagen could soon top Tesla. Meanwhile, GM is far behind both Tesla and Volkswagen but has set a goal of selling only emission-free vehicles by 2035, and there are early indications that the new Ford Mustang Mach-E is starting to win some market share away from Tesla in the US market.
In contrast to Ark’s relatively bullish outlook, some critics question whether fully autonomous vehicles are as close as proponents believe.
These concerns have weighed on Tesla shares in the past several weeks. After 2020’s wild run in which the stock gained 743%, Tesla has fallen for most of the last two months, dropping into bear market territory.
Yet even with that recent decline, the company is nearly as valuable as the market capitalization of world’s six largest automakers by vehicle sales — combined.
