Electric vehicle stocks are on watch after Tesla(TSLA-2.5%)CEO Elon Musk described "insane difficulties" with supply chains overa whole range of parts beyond just the chip shortage. "This is a huge problem," he noted on last night's conference call.
A quick scan of the sector shows EV stocks to be holding up decently in early trading, despite what appears to be a concern: Fisker(FSR-1.6%), Canoo(GOEV+0.6%), Nio(NIO+0.0%), Lordstown Motors(RIDE-0.1%), Blink Charging(BLNK+1.0%), ChargePoint Holdings(CHPT+0.2%), XPeng(XPEV-1.3%), Nikola(NKLA+3.4%), Arrival(ARVL+2.6%)and Li Auto(LI-0.4%). The strong numbers for Tesla out of China may be helping to keep sentiment positive.
Turning back to Tesla, the sell-side reaction to the EV Mother Ship's earnings report is pouring in.
Canaccord Genuity analyst Jed Dorsheimer: "We are maintaining our BUY rating, but reducing our PT to $974 (previously $1,071) post 1Q21 earnings, which is based on applying 60x our '24 EV/EBITDA estimate of $18B. While we acknowledge the rich multiple, we also believe TSLA maintains a meaningful market advantage, which we are trying to capture. We expect the energy management platform to have strong demand, particularly in California, where electricity supply has fallen below both gross peak and net peak needs as a result of transition to renewable sources leaving a gap in energy demand that needs to be compensated with imports from other states. We are expecting accelerated growth in the energy generation and storage business, growing conservatively above $8B in revenue in '25 with gross margins at parity or better than its BEV business (+25%)."
Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas: "We see room for investor expectations around Tesla’s long term place in China to be dialed-back significantly over time. We also believe expectations around the commercial ramp of ‘full autonomy’ is also rather over-hyped, in our opinion. At the same time, we believe expansion of Tesla’s manufacturing base (for both cars and batteries), and new product category introductions may be underestimated. We see Tesla emerging as 'chief contractor' to governments around the world who want to deploy renewable energy/sustainable transport infrastructure plans in the years ahead."
Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives: "Clearly, the chip shortage is a major X variable for Tesla (and every other automaker) which speaks to the company reiterating and not raising its annual 2021 50% delivery growth (likely exceed) number which likely will be exceeded by 100k-150k vehicles in our opinion if the supply chain starts to normalize a bit in 2H. While the bears will laser focus on the chip shortage spoiling the EV party for Tesla in 2021, we believe the reality is that demand is spiking globally for Tesla's/EVs, the company's flagship production build outs in Berlin and Austin appear right on schedule, and the company has a treasure chest and cash flow to fund future R&D/capex endeavors in this EV arms race for the next decade."
Tesla's earnings report came in largely as anticipated, but the conference calldelved into AI and Bitcoin more than may have been expected.