3 Potential Stock Price Scenarios From Tesla’s Upcoming Robotaxi Event

Summary:

• We have a strong track record of predicting TSLA’s stock price, and today we’re looking at what could happen on Thursday with the company’s ‘Robotaxi’ event.
• The upcoming event is crucial, with potential outcomes significantly impacting Tesla’s overall market cap.
• Based on the likelihood of positive outcomes from the event, we expect Tesla shares to be worth between $250 – $350 by next week.
• We’re re-iterating our ‘Buy’ rating on TSLA.

About a year ago, we put out our first-ever analysis on Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA), calling the stock a ‘Sell’ in an article titled: “Tesla: The Range Of Outcomes Is Narrowing; That’s A Bad Thing”.

For close TSLA followers, the core thesis of the piece will sound familiar, but at the time, in our view, shares looked pricey, the company’s margins and growth were both coming in somewhat vs. other manufacturers, and there was no visible progress on the company’s longer-term bets.

4 months following our sell rating, the stock was down about 26% to the mid $170-$180 per share range.

At that point, we upgraded the stock to a ‘Buy’, in an article titled: “Tesla: When The Time Comes To Buy, You Won’t Want To”.

While we weren’t entirely sold on TSLA’s long-term vision (and still aren’t), we thought the valuation looked a lot more compelling, recent advances on FSD were encouraging, and that buyers at that price would likely be rewarded over the short, medium, and long term.

Since that ‘Buy’ rating, the stock is up about 44%, outpacing the S&P 500 over that span by a factor of 4x+:

So – why are we back revisiting the controversial automaker?

Ostensibly, in a few days, TSLA will conduct their ‘Robotaxi’ event, where the company will supposedly unveil details about the long-awaited automated ride-share functionality. We believe Elon Musk has a history of over-promising and under-delivering in this realm (including announcing this event for August, then delaying it until this week), but is the rubber finally about to meet the road?

Today, we’ll explore three different potential outcomes from the event and derive three different potential Fair Values for the stock price, depending on what gets announced.

Are TSLA shares about to jump higher? Is the company worth considerably less than investors think? Let’s dive in and take a closer look at where the stock could be trading at the close on Friday.

Where Tesla Currently Sits

Coming into this event, TSLA’s stock is in an incredibly interesting position.

On one hand, the company is more financially sound than most other automakers, with only $5 billion in long-term debt, and sales that have grown from TTM ~$24 billion to nearly TTM $100 billion:

This is incredibly compelling top-line growth, no matter what industry you’re operating in.

Over this span, net income has also grown from ~negative $1 billion to positive $12.5 billion, which shows how TSLA has been able to leverage scale to boost margins and reward shareholders.

With a clean balance sheet, a strong brand, and a lead in the global EV market, we expect TSLA will have a bright future on the organic business front, no matter the result from Thursday’s event.

On the flip side, the stock is very, very expensive if you compare it to other traditional automakers like Toyota (TM), General Motors (GM), and Stellantis (STLA):

Tesla’s historical performance and brand are impressive, but its current valuation, ranging from 10x to 40x other automakers’ revenue multiples, seems excessive. Excluding the potential of future products, a more realistic valuation would be around $25 per share, or $80 billion.

This suggests that a significant portion of Tesla’s current value is tied to higher margin, non-automotive products like Robotaxi, Dojo, and Optimus.

Valuing these potential segments is very difficult because investors need to balance the following variables, none of which are easily quantifiable:

This is a big reason why the stock is so volatile and prone to swings – whenever management says something, that’s sometimes the best possible information we can get as investors with respect to the formula above. As Musk has promised Robotaxis for several years now with nothing tangible to show for it, it appears that credibility has begun to fade with Wall Street, which is why the stock hasn’t pumped much going into this announcement in our opinion.

Nevertheless, we’d estimate that about 80% of TSLA’s ‘future product’ value is perceived to be in the Robotaxi segment, as it is the closest to ‘production’ and the most natural extension of TSLA’s current business.

This is obviously a very ‘loose’ estimate on our part, but again, the robotaxi share of TSLA’s current market cap is an impossible figure to quantify. We think 80% is reasonable given how far away we are from a production version of Optimus, the other ‘future value’ pillar, which tempers that market’s enormous size and opportunity by the speed and likelihood that Tesla is to achieve real tangible value there.

If you take this estimate at face value, then it means that Thursday’s event is likely incredibly consequential for ~65% of TSLA’s market cap, or about $500 billion in shareholder value. We believe this is simple math – 80% of TSLA’s market cap is tied up in ‘future value’ if you comp it vs. other automakers, and perhaps 80% of that value is housed within the ‘robotaxi’ segment.

In the following sections, we’ll take a look at three different ways the event could go and posit a Fair Value for the stock in each scenario.

Robotaxi Bear Outcome

Ok – so let’s say the event doesn’t ‘go well’ in the eyes of investors. What does that look like?

A short delay of the event seems unlikely at this point, so we’ll count that out. Plus, if management delays the event, then the ‘value’ of the robotaxi segment remains nebulous. This would likely hurt the stock, but only slightly.

A ‘bad’ showing, in our view, would be if Musk gets up and announces the next level of FSD with a lot of pomp and circumstance, but nothing else concrete.

This would be a huge negative because it would kick the can down the road, showing that management doesn’t appear to get how important this is.

Historically, this has been acceptable because of how far TSLA is ahead of most competitors in the self-driving space, but as competition from Cruise, Waymo, and others catch up, delays to automated ride-share will begin compounding in opportunity cost, and TSLA will fall further behind monetizing on the self-driving advantage.

What does this case look like?

Here’s what we think TSLA’s Robotaxi segment could be worth if management needs 3 more years to launch and takes a 15% rake on every ride:

This model assumes that TSLA goes with a ‘crowdsourced’ approach to building a fleet and doesn’t operate any vehicles within its own network.

It also assumes high marketing costs and low market penetration, scaling over time into 2030. The 15% take rate also represents the rake we think TSLA would have to charge to build market momentum quickly.

For reference, right now, Uber (UBER) charges a ~30% rake on ride-share.

Market size is the trickiest thing to figure out, but we’ve modeled the current size of the ride-share market ($160 billion) in 2025, through the $5 trillion expected addressable market through 2030.

The NPV of TSLA’s robotaxi business through this period would be roughly $300 billion if you apply a 4% discount rate in the model above, which is 40% less than the segment is currently being valued at, if you agree with our assumptions above. This would knock roughly $200 billion off TSLA’s $800 billion market cap, which results in downside of about ~25% to shareholders, and a price of around ~$185 per share.

It’s a conservative estimate based on the terminal value cutoff we’ve imposed at 2030, but it seems reasonable if things don’t go well on Thursday night.

Robotaxi Base Outcome

Let’s now assume that Musk gets up on stage and talks about how a new level of FSD from TSLA should be able to power automated ride-share within two years. He announces a new app and directs people to a waitlist, building demand. He also announces a ‘Tesla Earn’ function within the app where Tesla owners can join the waitlist, building supply.

This would provide a much quicker route to monetization, and net margins would be much higher based on the quicker market entry, meaning lower CAC and a quicker rate to getting to established margins in the space of ~30%:

Estimating market share is difficult, but given the large latent installed base of Tesla’s that could instantly provide supply for a network like this, we think it would be a demand-constrained market. Over time, we think that TSLA could seize 40% of the ride-share market with this model.

As you can see, this base case is basically what the market is expecting – valuing the segment at about half a trillion. We’d likely see some wiggles with the stock following an announcement like this, but it probably wouldn’t spur a wild move.

Robotaxi Bull Outcome

Finally, we come to the bull outcome.

In this scenario, Musk gets up on stage and talks about how automated ride hail should be ready to launch within 3 months, and management is looking at taking a 25% cut for rides conducted on the network. Remember, this is still less than Uber’s ~30% take in Q1 of this year.

Back in this model, adoption is slow to start, but quickly scales as users join the network and make their idle Tesla’s earn while they sleep.

Again, the demand is the real constraint here, but given the likely lower cost of automated ride hail, it should prove popular with cost-conscious consumers:

In this scenario, we see TSLA earning more per ride, and with a larger network of supply and demand under their control.

This scenario would represent 60% upside for the NPV of the robotaxi segment (at a 4% discount rate), which works out to roughly 37% upside for TSLA’s stock.

This works out to a share price of roughly $345 per share, which would be a boon for shareholders.

Summary

All in all, there’s a range of outcomes that could happen Thursday night. The NPV of TSLA’s robotaxi division (which currently earns nothing) could change by hundreds of billions of dollars in value, as investors get a better idea of how the segment will ultimately look from a financial perspective.

The two key things to watch for here will be the speed at which the company can roll out the service, and the cut they’re planning on taking.

We think management is aware of how important this announcement is, and we also expect that they will have something concrete to announce, which makes the first scenario unlikely. We say this being fully aware of Tesla’s coy attitude to robotaxis historically.

Thus, with a higher probability of a base or bull outcome happening on Thursday, combined with the conservative terminal value cutoff used in the models, we’re leaning towards the bullish end of the spectrum when it comes to Tesla’s future value.

All told, we expect that shares could be worth anywhere between $250 – $350 per share this time next week.

As a result, we’re reiterating our ‘Buy’ rating on TSLA.

Stay safe out there!

---

Analyst’s Disclosure: I/we have a beneficial long position in the shares of TSLA either through stock ownership, options, or other derivatives. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

Seeking Alpha’s Disclosure: Past performance is no guarantee of future results. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. Any views or opinions expressed above may not reflect those of Seeking Alpha as a whole. Seeking Alpha is not a licensed securities dealer, broker or US investment adviser or investment bank. Our analysts are third party authors that include both professional investors and individual investors who may not be licensed or certified by any institute or regulatory body.

---