저자: The Money Investing · 외국인
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the reason. So, so Kathy, for better or worse, because there's always two sides to a story, you at ArcInvest have become very closely associated with one stock in particular, and that is Tesla because you made a lot of waves by attaching a $4,000 price target to the shares at one point. Yes. This means that you are obviously very bullish on Tesla and you do hold it in the funds.
Is that correct? And if so, is it just a buy and hold, hope it pans out for the next 20 or 25 years, or is it something different in the way that you approach this particular holding in Tesla? Uh, we it is our largest position. But before I go into that, and we are, and I'm our conviction has increased in the last year or so.
It's our largest position. It's down about 29% this year, and it's always been our largest position this year, and yet our fund is up 28%. How is that? How does that happen? Yes. How does that happen? It is because last year when genomics was under assault because of reimbursement concerns and pricing concerns and so forth, we were leaning into those heavily.
Uh so you buy low, right? We were leaning into those. And so our second largest position, Invite, which we think is one of the most important molecular diagnostic companies out there, riding down the cost curve of DNA sequencing, it's up 125%. It got as low as $5 last year. Today it's $18. So leaning into that has really paid off.
And it's true with the entire genome sector. We're doing the same this year with Tesla. But our conviction level there is so high that it never left our top position. How could it be so high? I mean, Tim, this is a stock that is, if you look at a chart of Tesla over the course of the year to date and the one-year period, this has at best been a roller coaster ride, at worst been one that's trending lower.
But first of all, it's great to have you here and congrats on the the performance in the portfolio because I think um there's no question there's an active component to what you're doing. And I think I would like to invest alongside of that if I was an investor with Tesla. Um I guess there's two questions.
I think there's been some obvious issues in terms of performance and some obvious issues on the balance sheet and but those those are that's my interpretation. It may not be yours. The first question I have is really just corporate governance risk because I look at a company um leaving aside an SEC investigation that
one might argue is overdone. Um I think it's a company where disclosure and consistency and the same standards I would hold to any company somehow for this company no one seems to hold them to it. How do you approach corporate governance? So we have a a six-point scoring system. All of them incorporate ESG in some way, shape or form.
First one is uh people management culture. Um nothing bothered us about what Elon was tweeting or anything until funding secured which once we found out that was not true, we said, "Okay, that's not good." And so we did ding uh uh uh Tesla for management uh when that happened. Does that mean a higher discount rate?
I mean what mechanically what does that mean? Yes. But you know what our target is it's not going to really move down. Uh but within a month and then three months two of our other scores started soaring. One was uh we learned about their artificial intelligence chip. We we saw the specs and our analyst James Wang came from Nvidia.
That's what they're replacing. And he said, "Oh my goodness." And he's going to write something this Wednesday about it. uh you know this leaprogs the competition uh and they're at least three if not four years ahead of the competition when and then a few months later execution went up when not only did they not lose in the third quarter $700 uh million but they made this is cash flow $1.4 4 billion.
So that was a con a miss in terms of consensus expectations of roughly $2 billion. That's what happens with exponential growth. The Tesla chief continues to be an evangelist for full self-driving and Tesla's autonomous vehicle technology, saying that 2027 and 2028 will be ridiculously good. He also said of the technology, "The only people who are skeptical are those who have not tried it." Musk and the rest of Tesla management spent little time discussing the automotive business on the earnings call, instead focusing on autonomy.
Tesla didn't give specific guidance, but it did call for the vehicle business to return to growth in 2025. Though it noted it wasn't fully switching new production to its next generation platform, which means it won't be able to lower costs as much as it hoped. The company still faces a lot of uncertainty in 2025, but investors seem to be buying into the autonomy story.
If Tesla can take steps toward full autonomy, the stock could move higher, though it still faces considerable downside risk. But Tesla expects its core vehicle business to return to growth in 2025, the company said in its earnings presentation. [snorts] The company also announced it plans to begin production next year on its cyber cab driverless taxi vehicle and to begin making its less expensive cars in the first half of 2025.
The market reaction was a roller coaster. Shares dropped 5% in after hours trading Wednesday, building on a 2% decline during regular hours before reversing to a 5% gain by Thursday's market open as investors seemingly oscillated between the disappointing Q4 financial results and the positive production updates.
Tesla stock was up more than 4% by late afternoon Thursday, a whipssaw that befuddled even the most established analysts on Wall Street. Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas questioned in a note to clients, "What else may be at work driving the debate around the stock, while JP Morgan analyst Ryan Brinkman's recap note questioned why Tesla shares somehow gained as much as they did.
"I'm not saying it's an easy path, but I see a path for Tesla being the most valuable company in the world by far," Musk said on Wednesday's earnings call. There is a path where Tesla is worth more than the next top five companies combined. Musk added, "Tesla is the world's eighth most valuable company in the world with a $1.3 trillion market capitalization, while the five biggest firms are worth nearly $15 trillion in aggregate.
The highly optimistic Musk also teased the idea of a $10 trillion revenue opportunity for Tesla's Optimus humanoid robots. The move higher in Tesla shares bore no relation whatsoever to the company's financial performance in the quarter just completed or to its outlook for growth in the coming year wrote Brinkman who added Tesla's share price has become completely divorced from the fundamentals.
Mus did not address some shareholders conflict of interest concerns on the Q4 earnings call. The Tesla shareholders forum used for earnings call. Questions include more than 100 questions on Musk, including ones asking how Musk's role in the White House cuts into time with Tesla and if Tesla has lost sales due to Musk's outspoken views, though none on Musk's political activities were answered Thursday.
Tesla, the most valuable automaker in the world, valued at over $1 trillion, did not pay any federal income tax last year. Tesla's annual financial report released this morning shows the company enjoyed $2.3 billion of US income in 2024 on which it reports precisely zero current federal income tax. Over the past 3 years, the Elon Muskled company reports $10.8 billion of US income on which its current federal tax was just $48 million.
That comes to a 3-year federal tax rate of just 0.4%. more than 50 times less than the statutory corporate tax rate of 21%. Tesla saved half a billion in taxes last year using accelerated depreciation. Tax breaks for executive stock options shaved a4 billion off the company's tax bill. Unspecified US tax credits were good for $300 billion of tax savings.
Musk's company also used net operating losses to offset currentear income. Although it's hard to know how much of that affects US income rather than the company's far larger foreign income. Congress might give Tesla even more tax breaks. A bill passed by the House of Representatives in the previous Congress would have retroactively reinstated a provision allowing full expensing of research and development expenses, which could save the company up to $2.4 billion in taxes.
Shares of Tesla fell again on Monday as a negative turn in how chief executive Elon Musk is being viewed by consumers is fueling concern that sales will take a hit. There's also a growing unease that uncertainty caused by the Trump administration regarding incentives for electric vehicles and EV chargers could also reduce demand in the US.
Demand for Tesla vehicles has already taken a hit overseas. The stock dropped 10% last week, its worst weekly performance since early October. While it has still run up 43% since the presidential election, in which Musk was a massive financial and campaign trail supporter of Donald Trump, it has slid about 25% since closing at a record $47986 on December 17.
There are market trends that Tesla stock is perming contrary to right now. One is the overall Tesla stock movement since the November US election. That stock gained 70% between that point in November and January 20th when Trump officially took office. Tesla is also performing against the current bullish stock market trend.
Meta, Amazon, Apple, Google, and Nvidia are all up this week, but Tesla is one of the notable stocks that is falling and falling sharply. It may seem extreme for Tesla stock to fall so much based solely on a business discussion that does not necessarily impact Tesla directly. However, when Musk is not focusing on Tesla, the investors get worried.
And if he is planning to invest billions into buying an AI company, he may not be as concerned if Tesla flounders. A lot of Tesla's stock value has fluctuated over the last couple of months based mostly on political statements and internet chatter more than on solid numbers. That means that when Musk makes a declaration on X about how he plans to invest the company's billions, it affects the stock price.
Investors may prefer that he attempt to make his deals less publicly, but so far that has not been his style. We do expect a market correction now for Tesla since it appears that Altman is not interested in the buyout. But if it looks like Musk is still shopping around with billions, that could drive the stock price down further.
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