저자: SamEvans · 외국인
요약 보기
2008년 머스크가 버핏에게 테슬라 2억달러 가치로 투자 제안했다는 주장을 소개하며, 버크셔가 기회를 놓쳤다고 설명. 테슬라는 독일 판매 급감·슈퍼차저 팀 해고 등 악재가 있으나 로보택시·로보틱스 전환은 옳은 방향이라 평가. 버핏이 지금 투자한다면 긍정적 신호가 될 것이라며 '남들이 두려워할 때 탐욕을'을 인용해 테슬라 매수 기회를 시사.
다듬은 글
Guys, I cannot believe I only just discovered this story. This is absolutely insane. We've been talking for a long time about how Toyota missed the boat on Tesla. Toyota and Tesla had a joint partnership, and then Toyota just got out of that and lost out. They sold their Tesla shares, which would have been worth nearly as much as the entire Toyota company itself.
But who knew that Warren Buffett and Elon Musk actually sat down and had lunch in 2008? Elon Musk basically said to Warren Buffett at the time, 16 years ago, just invest a bit of money into us, and I promise you we'll reward you. What happened was unfortunate for Berkshire Hathaway investors, put it that way.
Hello, my friends. Welcome to the channel. I'm Sam Evans, and you're watching The Electric Viking. Great to see you. Thank you for tuning in.
Back in 2008, Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger flew to China. There they were convinced by the founder of Himalayan Capital in the US, who I believe was a Chinese citizen but had moved to the US, to purchase a stake in BYD. Berkshire Hathaway made billions from that. It's one of their best investments ever. But if they had invested even a very small sum into Tesla, or the same amount as they put into BYD, they would have made billions and billions of dollars. The figure is very hard to pin down, but Musk basically said, "Munger could have invested in Tesla at a 200 million valuation when I had lunch with him in late 2008."
To give you an idea of the difference, today's Tesla valuation is 547.7 billion. Musk valued the company in 2008 at 200 million. So if you put just a million dollars in, which was literally lunch money for Warren Buffett at the time, that million would have turned into close to a billion dollars. That's insane.
Berkshire Hathaway spokesman Mark Hamburg was approached about this story, because Elon Musk tweeted about it, and he never responded. So Berkshire Hathaway has never commented on this. Munger's passing in November, shortly before his 100th birthday, could in theory open the door to an investment by Berkshire Hathaway. Buffett is at least more admiring of Musk.
It's true that Buffett did not invest in Tesla because of Charlie Munger. Buffett didn't like Elon Musk personally, and probably doesn't like him now even though he's in the grave. But Munger was pretty vocal about his dislike of Musk. The other thing worth pointing out is that Warren Buffett is more of a value investor. He usually makes safe bets in companies with strong brands like Apple and Coca-Cola, or when he spots blood in the water, such as his purchase of Goldman Sachs shares at the height of the Lehman crisis. That was a pretty good buy. I was watching Buffett at that time wondering what he'd do, and when I saw that, I thought it was very savvy.
But one of his less savvy investments, and let's be fair, Buffett has been a genius investor, was General Motors. He held GM stock for more than 10 years until he completely dumped his entire position only a few months ago. That's one of the worst decisions Buffett ever made. Imagine if he had purchased that much in Tesla. He couldn't have, because Tesla wasn't even worth that much when he initially bought the GM stock. But if he could have bought the entire company...
Anyway, on Sunday Musk renewed his appeal to the Oracle of Omaha to bless him and his company with a confidence-boosting investment. That would boost Tesla stock, I think. People would see "Oh, Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett, gives the tick of approval to Tesla," and a lot of retail investors would probably follow. Responding to a post by Galileo Russell, former non-executive director of failed EV startup Arcimoto, who urged Buffett to buy Tesla shares, Musk agreed: he should take a position in Tesla. It's an obvious move, and I think that's a pretty smart tweet from Musk.
The only thing is, to be fair, Musk is perceived as very unpredictable at the moment. He just sacked his entire Supercharger team, which was long considered an unbeatable strategic advantage, and Tesla is clearly pivoting away from its core business of selling cars toward robotaxis and robotics. I think that makes sense, but that's not Warren Buffett's thing. He's not really into that kind of pivot. It's perceived as too risky, which is understandable. At 56 times estimated earnings for next year, the multiple probably isn't attractive to a value-minded investor like Buffett.
The outlook for Musk's EV business has darkened considerably. Tesla's first-quarter global sales dropped not just sequentially over the final three months of 2023, but year-on-year as well. That was the first such decline since the pandemic brought the global economy to a standstill in 2020. The latest sign of pressure came on Monday, when Germany's motor vehicle authority published new car registrations for April. Tesla volumes fell by a third from the previous year's period, when EV makers still benefited from generous government subsidies that expired in December. Germany removing those subsidies has significantly impacted the EV market in the country. Sales of Tesla cars in Germany are now down 36% through the first four months of this year. We don't know whether production stoppages at Tesla's Berlin plant affected those sales, though Tesla apparently has plenty of finished cars in inventory. The decline reflects a broader malaise that has led some to speculate that Tesla sales could be noticeably lower this year than last.
That's probably not what Warren Buffett is looking for. He wants growth, sustainable slow growth, and Tesla isn't really interested in that anymore. They're swinging for the fences. They believe that just selling cars as a business may not be the best strategy, and personally I agree with them 100%. They're basically following the strategy Tony Seba laid out back in 2014, which Musk also talked about many years ago: changing the paradigm of human history with robotics, human-like robots, and cars that drive themselves. The future, I believe, is going to be what Musk says it is. Whether Tesla can crack these codes is a completely different story. But you have to admit that Tony Seba, who has made the most accurate predictions of any futurist in the world, has predicted pretty much what Tesla is aiming for. Somebody will get there. The question is who, where, and when.
What do you guys think? Let me know in the comments. If Warren Buffett were to purchase a stake in Tesla, that would certainly change people's impression of the company, probably for the better. I think it would be a good move too. I know it's very much against the current trend. Everyone is sort of against Tesla right now. But remember Warren Buffett's most famous saying: "Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful." Right now, people are fearful of Tesla. Maybe it's time to be greedy.
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