TESLA shareholders approved CEO Elon Musk’s US$56 billion pay package in what was seen as an endorsement of his leadership, but the electric carmaker’s stock remains richly valued even after several years of weakness in shares.
Shareholders at Tesla’s annual general meeting on Thursday (Jun 13) reapproved Musk’s 2018 record-setting compensation that backers said is necessary to keep the billionaire focused on the car company.
While Musk could still face a long legal fight to convince a Delaware judge who invalidated the pay package in January, Tesla’s stock rose nearly 3 per cent on Thursday ahead of the meeting after Musk posted on his social media platform X that he had won shareholder approval.
Even after Thursday’s gains, Tesla’s shares have tumbled 27 per cent this year, and its market value has more than halved to US$582 billion from its November 2021 high as Tesla faces fierce competition in China from BYD and other EV makers selling less-expensive cars.
Tesla’s shares received a badly needed boost after Musk said on Apr 23 that the company would release more affordable new models in 2025. Its quarterly revenue fell for the first time since 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic hampered production and deliveries.
In the meantime, Wall Street’s other tech heavyweights have soared. Amazon and Alphabet have each gained over 20 per cent in 2024, Meta Platforms surged more than 40 per cent and Nvidia has nearly trebled. Tesla’s stock market value has also been overtaken by Eli Lilly and Broadcom.
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Analysts’ optimism for Tesla has cooled dramatically. The average analyst price target for Tesla is now US$181, down from US$226 at the start of 2024, and just a shade below Thursday’s closing price of US$182.47, according to the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG).
Musk has told investors they should view Tesla as an “AI robotics company” rather than a carmaker, and its stock has long traded at earnings multiples higher than many technology companies as well.
Tesla shares are priced near 61 times expected earnings, up from about 22 in January, though that is far below a price-to-earnings ratio of 150 reached in November 2021.
By comparison, General Motors and Ford Motor are trading at forward PE multiples of five and six, respectively, while Toyota is trading at nine times expected earnings, according to LSEG.
In another reflection of Tesla’s high valuation relative to its business, Tesla’s stock market value is equivalent to almost US$6 million per employee, down slightly from two years ago, but still almost 20 times higher than GM and Ford, which each have about US$300,000 in market value per employee.
Unlike GM and Ford, part of Tesla’s employee base works at service centres around the world, equivalent to GM and Ford’s independently owned dealership networks.
Even after its decline, Tesla remains the world’s most valuable carmaker, far ahead of Toyota, the world’s biggest vehicle maker by volume.
Toyota has a stock market value of about US$270 billion. In 2020, Tesla’s surging stock made the company more valuable than the combined value of Toyota, Volkswagen, Hyundai, GM, Ford and BMW.
In January, Tesla’s falling share price caused its value to dip slightly below the combined value of the other major carmakers. REUTERS
