Benchmark's Mickey Legg raises his price target on Tesla's stock to $475, which implies 45% upside and a $1.5 trillion market cap for the EV/robotics company
There's a new deputy on Wall Street - for the position of the most bullish analyst on Tesla Inc.'s stock.
Mickey Legg at Benchmark raised his share-price target for the electric-vehicle maker - nay, robotics company - to $475 from $395, while keeping his rating at buy. Of the 54 analysts surveyed by FactSet who cover Tesla $(TSLA)$, Legg is now behind only the prolific Dan Ives at Wedbush, who has a $500 target on Tesla's stock.
Those targets compare with the stock's record close of $479.86 on Dec. 17, 2024.
Legg acknowledges that Tesla is expected to report relatively weak second-quarter deliveries in early July, but the company's electric-car business is basically passé. While there's still room for EV sales to improve as new lower-priced models are introduced, that's not why he's so bullish.
"In our view, the company is undergoing an evolution from a trailblazing vehicle [original equipment manufacturer] to a high-tech automation and robotics company with unmatched domestic manufacturing scale," Legg wrote in a Thursday note to clients.
It has dropped 6.1% over the past two sessions, but that was after it shot up 8.2% on Monday as investors cheered Tesla's much-awaited robotaxi launch in Austin, Texas, over the weekend.
Legg's new price target implies 45% upside from Wednesday's closing price of $327.55. And based on 3.22 billion shares outstanding as of April 16, Tesla's market capitalization at the new target would be $1.53 trillion.
He said Tesla's main competition in the ride-hailing robotaxi business is Alphabet Inc.'s $(GOOG)$ $(GOOGL)$ Waymo, which is already operating in four cities, including Austin. But while Waymo has "first mover" advantage, Legg believes more in Tesla's camera-focused approach to full self-driving, which "is not only cost effective but also scalable," Legg wrote.
Tesla naysayers also worry about declining vehicle sales brought on by weaker demand for higher-priced vehicles and by backlash over Chief Executive Elon Musk's prominent cost-cutting role in the Trump administration.
But Legg believes that weakness is widely expected and is therefore already reflected in the stock's price.
Tesla's stock has tumbled 18.9% in 2025 through Wednesday, while the S&P 500 index SPX has gained 3.6%.
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