Liam Denning, Columnist

Tesla Is a Car Company. Its Stock Is a Meme.

Many analysts tracking the company have become like momentum-chasing investors with little interest in actual earnings.

February 3, 2025 at 11:30 AM UTC

Liam Denning is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering energy. A former banker, he edited the Wall Street Journal’s Heard on the Street column and wrote the Financial Times’s Lex column.

Ready for the ride.
Photographer: Brandon Bell/Getty Images North America

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This was an understandable reaction to Tesla Inc.’s latest set of results:

That was Adam Jonas, Morgan Stanley’s auto analyst, kicking off his report. The basic elements are all there: Tesla’s vehicle sales, pricing and margins were awful and Chief Executive Elon Musk’s various pronouncements were characteristically vague. Yet the stock popped. Jonas concludes that this dismal quarter was “emblematic of a company in the transition from an automotive ‘pure play’ to a highly diversified play on AI and robotics.” The next day, he cut 2025 forecasts for vehicle deliveries, pricing and margins, battery deliveries and overall earnings. The price target was unchanged at $430 (Tesla closed Friday at about $404 with a market cap of $1.3 trillion).