Is Tesla Stock Going to Keep Rising? Elon Musk Reassured Investors in February
Model 3 hype and reservations have really boosted the EV company's stock.
Back in February, Inverse listened in on the Tesla investors’ call. CEO Elon Musk did his job well, reassuring investors that his electric vehicle company was doing just fine, and even promising that 2016 would prove a big year.
Musk, it turns out, was not misleading those investors. Ever since that phone call, Tesla stock ($TSLA) has continued to steadily climb. In the just under two months that have passed since the call, the stock has jumped over $100 per share, from about $144 — the lowest it’s been since late 2013 — to $255. (The regret-tinged math is simple, here: if you’d bought 10 shares back then, you’d be a grand richer. A grand is how much a Model 3 reservation cost. If you’d bought 100 shares then, you’d be 10 grand richer. Ten grand is one-third of the Model 3’s total cost. Et cetera.) A revitalized climb began on March 31, the day reservations opened for the Model 3. On that day, each share was about $226.
The Model 3 is the mass-market version of the luxurious Model S. It starts at $35,000 before tax incentives, though it will be modular — meaning the final price will be higher. (On average, Musk thinks, people will select options that will bring the total up to about $42k.) As the first truly “affordable”-yet-luxurious electric vehicle, it’s been turning heads. In many ways, Tesla’s able to generate the same hype that iPhones did: even in the middle of a Manhattan workday, people lined up to reserve the Model 3; in Brooklyn, people camped out.
"Every peak needs a valley," or something.
And the more hype that Musk can generate with his sneaky Twitter allusions, the more likely it is that heads will continue to turn. If heads do continue to turn, Tesla stock will presumably continue to rise.
And Musk thinks that shorting Tesla stock is “unwise” — suggesting that he isn’t expecting a downturn anytime soon:
At the same time, there’s some skepticism: Tesla has notoriously struggled to meet production quotas and keep pace with demand. Tesla Model 3 reservations are blowing even Musk’s expectations out of the water, and he’s already admitted the need to rethink production strategies. The stock will continue to inflate (with some natural depressions tossed in the mix), and will do so around important dates as it has in this case, but Tesla will also need to keep pace.
