Home / Opinion / Tesla’s Stock Has Surged 22% on This $2 Trillion Market Opportunity
Opinion
3 min read

Tesla’s Stock Has Surged 22% on This $2 Trillion Market Opportunity

Last Updated
W. E. Messamore
Last Updated

By CCN.com: Tesla’s stock is making a fast and furious comeback in June. That’s good news for shareholders after TSLA spent the first half of 2019 suffering crippling losses. Now the famed electric automaker’s stock is on the rebound.

The stock is up 22% for the month.

tesla stock
Tesla’s stock is up 22% in June, regaining some investor confidence after a terrible first half of 2019. | Chart: Yahoo Finance

Does Wall Street Have Tesla’s Stock All Wrong?

Tesla’s massive losses have led investors to fear an impending cash crunch. The company had to widen its junk bond spread to record levels this spring.

With fears mounting over Tesla’s distressed credit history and the looming threat of a trade war with China, traders slammed the brakes on Tesla’s stock.

The price declined 32% this year prior to June’s rebound.

But some Wall Street analysts are saying the sell-off has gone too far. They take Tesla’s problems seriously but also expect to see growth ahead because of opportunities.

In a Wednesday note to investors, Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas said :

“We continue to believe Tesla is fundamentally overvalued but potentially strategically undervalued.”

The glass-half-full scenario is because Tesla is a global leader in autonomous vehicle technology.

Self-Driving Cars, a $2 Trillion Opportunity

According to Tasha Keeney, an analyst at Ark Invest who specializes in industrial innovation, the self-driving car market should be  valued by equities markets at $2 trillion:

“We think the autonomous driving market is going to be a huge opportunity. We think this should be valued at $2 trillion today in the equity markets, and it’s virtually unaccounted for. We think Tesla has a great lead there, and that’s because of the data advantage that they have.”

There are 1.2 billion vehicles on the road today, according to  Navigant Research. By 2035, that number will be 2 billion.

So roughly speaking, Ark Invest perceives the value today of every car on the road being self-driving at some time in the near future to be around $1,000 per vehicle.

Consider the amount of time people spend driving.

It’s how Americans spend 70 billion  hours a year in total.

If all that time is worth $25.82/hour in opportunity costs (TradingEconomics’ projected  average hourly wage in the United States for 2020), then being able to work, read, relax, or even catch up on sleep while in transit would recover $1.8074 trillion worth of time value every year for American drivers alone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSZ__c4y1m4

Tesla’s stock finished the day higher by roughly 1% and is up in after-hours trading.