Electric car company Tesla has recently seen a major surge in its stock price, which recently exceeded $537, with CEO of ARK invest predicting the stock surge to $6,000.
Tesla stock rising rapidly in early 2020
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) stock price has been performing strongly in the last several days, surging from $480 on January 8th, to nearly $540 right now. However, ARK Invest’s CEO, Cathie Wood, believes that this is only a beginning for Tesla and that its stock price will go several times higher in the next few years.
During her recent appearance on CNBC’s Squawk Alley, she stated that one of the older predictions for the future of Tesla stock price was $4,000 in 5-year time. However, some of the more recent calculations have exceeded even that, placing the future price of the stock to as much as $6,000. With predictions like that, many are already comparing Tesla stock’s rise to that of the price of Bitcoin (BTC) itself. While Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, never hinted that he is a Bitcoin investor, he did recently drop a Bitcoin reference, causing a bit of confusion and excitement in the crypto community, as reported by Bitcoinist.
Tesla to… $6,000? @cathiedwood explains.@CNBC @carlquintanilla @morganlbrennan @jonfortt pic.twitter.com/64ibhsHyOp
— Squawk Alley (@SquawkAlley) January 14, 2020
Many have felt that this is a rather bold prediction for a company that only had a handful of profitable quarters so far. However, when asked where these predictions came from, Wood stated that,
We are focused on the electric vehicle market, first of all, and how quickly it will grow. We think that, from 2 million units last year, we’ll be at 37 million units — that’s about one-third of the total auto market in 5 years — by 2024.
Wood also revealed that the original expectations were that Tesla might lose a third of its market share. She noted that Tesla was at 17% last year, and it was expected that it would drop down to 11%. This did not happen, and instead, Tesla took the lead and rose above other auto companies, which led to the new prediction that Tesla may not lose market share at all.
She also pointed out that all of these new predictions do not even include autonomous vehicles, and are focused strictly on the electric vehicle market.
Aiming at $1 trillion market cap in 5 years
If these predictions turn out to be correct, and Tesla’s shares do reach the price of $6,000, that would mean that the company’s market cap would surge to $1 trillion over the course of the next 5 years. At this point, there are only two other companies with a market cap of that size — Apple and Microsoft.
Both firms are very profitable, and Wood believes that Tesla will undoubtedly join their ranks, as well. She notes that the margins on electric vehicles are likely to be much higher than anticipated. However, she believes that Tesla’s autonomous taxi network is what will actually help the company rise to these heights.
Teslas will soon talk to people if you want. This is real. pic.twitter.com/8AJdERX5qa
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 12, 2020
She says,
Those margins are software-as-a-service-like margins, in the 80% range instead of the 30% gross margin range.
Wood also noted that this is nothing like traditional auto analysts have encountered before, which is why they cannot come to the same conclusions.
One valuable point that came up during the interview is that autonomous vehicles are likely to hit a regulatory wall, even if Tesla were to perform flawlessly. But, Wood pointed out that regulators appreciate statistics, and that they have analyzed Tesla’s accidents. According to data, Tesla owners are 40% less likely to get into an accident.
Accidents mostly occur due to human error, which will be greatly eliminated with autonomous vehicles. This is the data that will allow Tesla to get regulators on board. In fact, Wood predicts that Tesla’s autonomous networks are likely to emerge in the US and China by the end of 2021.
Finally, Wood noted that Tesla, unlike Uber, or even Google, made a major effort to collect the largest amount of top-quality road data out there, which makes it the leader in autonomous vehicles development. As of now, the closest company behind Tesla seems to be Volkswagen, according to Wood.
What do you think about Tesla’s rapidly growing stock price? Let us know in the comments below.
Image via Shutterstock, Twitter @@SquawkAlley @elonmusk