Tesla Analysts Do About Face and Shares Resume Their Rally

(Bloomberg) -- Tesla Inc. shares resumed their steep ascent on Tuesday, after two prominent Wall Street analysts raised their price targets on the electric vehicle maker, and the company resumed deliveries of its China-built model 3 sedans after a pause due to the coronavirus outbreak.

The company’s potential to become a key battery supplier for electric vehicles prompted Morgan Stanley’s Adam Jonas to nearly double his bull case for the shares.

Jonas increased his most optimistic projection for Tesla to $1,200 a share from $650. That’s about 50% above the U.S. company’s $800.03 closing price Friday and would give Tesla a market capitalization of $220 billion. Jonas raised his base case target to $500 a share from $360 but reiterated his sell-equivalent recommendation.

The new bull scenario is based on an “aggressive assumption” that Tesla could win 30% of the global electric-vehicle market, Jonas wrote in a report to clients. This would include 4 million car deliveries by 2030 plus the potential for Tesla to supply powertrains, including batteries and electric motors, to other auto manufacturers. In 2019, the company handed over 367,500 vehicles to customers.

Separately, Sanford C Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi raised his price target to $730 from $325, saying that while it is difficult to justify the company’s current share price, investors now feel much better about its ability to be sustainably profitable. The analyst also noted that Tesla’s Model 3 demand remained healthy, gross margin and operating expense were both poised to materially improve, competition was sputtering and product and production pipelines were robust.

“Tesla is the ultimate ‘possibility’ stock,” Sacconaghi wrote in a note to clients, adding that the company’s core addressable market was likely to grow more than 30-times over the next 20 years, implying that even if Tesla’s current market share gets cut by half, it would still grow 15-times during the period. The analyst maintained his hold-equivalent rating.

Tesla shares have had a wild ride this year. The stock is up 91% in 2020, a jump variously attributed to good results, a short squeeze, the opening of a key new factory in China or an extreme case of investor FOMO -- or all of the above. The surge cooled before the Palo Alto, California-based company undertook a $2 billion share offering Friday, priced at the steepest discount the carmaker has ever given to its investors.

Analysts either have yet to adjust to the gain or remain highly skeptical. The average share-price target among analysts tracked by Bloomberg is $489.47.

Morgan Stanley’s bear case for the stock is now $220. While that’s a 91% improvement from the broker’s most recent worst-price scenario, Jonas is sticking to his recommendation against buying the stock, saying the risk-reward balance on the manufacturer continues to be “unfavorable.”

Tesla shares gained as much as 7.3% in New York, to touch $858.

--With assistance from Lisa Pham and Catherine Larkin.

To contact the reporters on this story: Sam Unsted in London at sunsted@bloomberg.net;Esha Dey in New York at edey@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Beth Mellor at bmellor@bloomberg.net, Tom Lavell, Scott Schnipper

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