Tesla Proves Being A Stock Analyst Is Easy, Being A Good Stock Analyst Is Hard

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Last Updated on: 6th April 2025, 11:08 pm

Tesla stock is up, Tesla stock is down. Tesla stock is a long term hold. If you own Tesla stock, sell it now before it becomes worthless. Put 10 stock analysts in the same room and ask them their opinion about Tesla stock and you will get 17 different opinions. Case in point — Dan Ives, auto sector analyst for Wedbush Securities, who has given Tesla a buy rating consistently for the past four years, during which time the stock has gyrated wildly from a low of around $130 to a high of more than $440.

On March 6, 2025, Wedbush Securities added Tesla to its “best ideas” list. The shares had just closed at $263.45, their lowest in four months, and analyst Daniel Ives reiterated his view that they were headed to $550. “Table pounder here,” Ives wrote for emphasis in the title of his report. According to Bloomberg, Ives and Wedbush estimated then that less than 5 percent of Tesla sales globally were at risk from what he referred to as “the elephant in the room” — namely, the potential for Elon Musk, the Department of Government, and Donald Trump to damage Tesla’s brand.

Ives downplayed how much Musk’s involvement with the White House would take him away from paying attention to Tesla, saying he expected Musk “will better balance his time” between DOGE and his companies over the course of the year. Hopefully Ives is a better stock analyst than he is a psychologist. Just recently, Musk was stumping for a reactionary judge in an election for the Wisconsin Supreme Court and giving away checks for $1 million to potential voters.

“We continue to believe the best thing that ever happened to Musk and Tesla was Trump in the White House,” Ives wrote at the time. Less than a month later, he was singing a different tune and has been continuously second guessing where he stands on the future of Tesla. “Patience wearing very thin,” he wrote in the title of a note to investors on March 11, 2025. “Tesla is going through a crisis,” he declared nine days later. After Tesla reported its worst quarterly sales since 2022 last week, Ives became downright despondent. “Need to navigate brand crisis or else,” he trumpeted in the subject line of another research note. “This is a fork in the road decision. Musk needs to get his act together, or else unfortunately darker times are ahead for Tesla.”

Perhaps getting the refreshed Tesla Model Y into production was a factor in its dreadful first quarter, but Bloomberg notes, “It is not normal for people to be picketing outside showrooms, spraying paint on storefronts, and even setting cars ablaze. Many consumers considering which brand to go with when making what tends to be their second most expensive purchase after their house are going to think twice about a Tesla until and unless the fury around Musk dies down.”

Ryan Brinkman of JPMorgan has consistently been far more pessimistic about Tesla as an investment than Dan Ives, but on April 4, even he said in a note to investors that “Tesla’s 1Q sales and production report causes us to think that — if anything — we may have underestimated the degree of consumer reaction.” In other words, the wheels have come off the Tesla wagon in a way that even the most bearish analysts could scarcely have imagined. To some, it seemed as if Elon Musk was deliberately doing things to damage the Tesla brand, and yet not one person on the Tesla board of directors has rebuked Musk for firing torpedoes into his own company. People can hardly conceive of any chief executive ever working so hard to undermine a company this way.

JPMorgan now expects Tesla’s first quarter earnings to slip to 36 cents a share, short of its previous projection of 40 cents. The consensus among all auto industry analysts is 46 cents. Brinkman also trimmed his full year earnings projection to $2.30 a share. Analysts surveyed by Bloomberg are estimating the company will earn $2.70 per share and Brinkman notes that this figure had dropped 17% since Tesla last reported quarterly earnings in late January.

Yet with all the insanity swirling around Musk, some stock analysts still see an upside for the company. “Several media reports and investor inquiries we have received have pointed to demand destruction and brand deterioration,” Ben Kallo at Baird wrote this week. “While this very well may be a factor driving lower deliveries in certain regions, we believe additional data points are needed to confirm and expect these narratives to continue in the near term.” Alexander Potter at Piper Sandler was even more dismissive. “While journalists are seizing on the opportunity to write about arson, we think the investing community risks losing sight of Tesla’s upcoming product unveilings, as well as the impending robotaxi launch in Austin,” he wrote.

CleanTechnica readers may have their own thoughts about Musk’s robotaxi hype. At some point, he can only be the boy who cried “full self driving” for so long before people lose interest as he constantly moves the goal posts on his projections. Those of us who have followed the trajectory of the company since the Model S first went on sale have seen broken promise after broken promise, whether it was solar roofs, the Roadster 2.0, the Tesla Semi, the robotaxi, the $25,000 car, or the Boring Company.

“Tesla has essentially become a political symbol globally,” Ives said recently. “It is time for Musk to step up, read the room, and be a leader in this time of uncertainty.” He has reduced his Tesla price target to $315 from $550, which had been the second highest price target among the 72 auto analysts tracked by Bloomberg. His biggest concern is the potential for Tesla to get caught up in the backlash against the US’s latest tariff idiocy, particularly as it applies to China. Tesla generated more than 20 percent of its revenue from sales in China last year, but now the Chinese government intends to impose a 34 percent tariff on all imports from the US, starting April 10, to match the so-called reciprocal tariffs the US has levied on Chinese products.

“This will further drive Chinese consumers to buy domestic such as BYD, Nio, Xpeng and others,” Ives said in a research note on April 6. “We now estimate Tesla has lost/destroyed at least 10% of its future customer base globally based on self-created brand issues, and this could be a conservative estimate.” Last month we speculated somewhat tongue in cheek about who would buy Tesla when it went bankrupt. That is no longer as far fetched as it seemed then.

At CleanTechnica, we studiously avoid giving advice about investments. Years ago, people used to pore over quarterly reports and a mountain of statistics to tease out the signs that a stock was about to rise or fall in value. Investors focused on arcane information like price-to-earnings ratios and the history of stock dividends before making investment decisions. No more. Now it is all smoke and mirrors, hype, and personality cults.

Are Tesla shares worth $200? $300? Or $400? Based on traditional metrics, the answer is a resounding “No.” The only thing keeping the company’s share price above about $50 a share is the faith people put in Elon Musk, and he seems to be doing everything in his power to destroy that faith, aided and abetted by a supine board of directors. The closest analogy for the Great And Powerful Musk we can think of is a famous scene in the movie Wizard of Oz from 1939. See if you agree.