Enphase had a P/S of 35, Sunnova 34, Chargepoint 94, Ballard 285, Microvast 29. Plug Power $24b mcap with no revenue at all. QuantumScape was trading at >100 2023 sales. I’m not even cherry picking. Bundling charging/battery using Alphaville is 217 aggregate.
This is all kind of irrelevant as we all know if they did decide to spinoff the hype would propel it north of $200b for no reason anyway.
Haha that’s incredible, ok I guess I still wouldn’t call it ‘conservative’ but within the context of such a huge market dislocation it’s actually pretty reasonable.
My two cents on comparisons for Tesla energy valuation are based on combining Sunrun (leading residential solar company in the US), Fluence (utility battery storage joint venture between Siemens and AES) and maybe chargepoint as well. It’s hard to compare like with like but those three companies to me represent a reasonable approximation of what Tesla energy currently does. Combining their market caps:
Sunrun = $11.4 billion
Fluence = $1 billion (estimated valuation based on recent fund raise)
Chargepoint = $7.4 billion
Total = $19.8 billion
I think Tesla are well ahead of Fluence and chargepoint in those categories so I think it’s fair to round up a bit to maybe $25 billion as a reasonable guess. Just my back of the envelope method. It’s a very hard division to value. Enormous potential for growth in the years ahead but right now not a money maker for the company.
Thanks this is really helpful, from a quick look it seems like a relatively robust and reasonable assessment. Obviously these companies are aggressively valued but represent a fair comparison in terms of scale and development.
Didnt really agree with much of this. I think he is wrong about where the energy storage value lies. He suggested its the big utility projects where the money lies but I think the value is going to be in the grid services, products like ‘autobidder’ and virtual power plants. Selling big battery projects as turn-key solutions is OK but Tesla are all about vertical integration. Powerwall is the product that will effectively allow them to become a utility company over time and more important than megapack. Also saying super charger deployment stalled massively is a bit silly. They had a one time bumper installment in China in Q4 last year and have reverted back to the trend of steady deployment. Its still easily the biggest network of its type anywhere and setting the standard globally. Saying they could risk running out of money if their cash pile drops to $10 billion was also laughable. That could only happen if all of their revenue suddenly dropped to zero. Which it wont. The real metrics that matter at this stage of their development are free cash flow and EBITDA which both remain very healthy.
I think the biggest listed competitor to Tesla Energy is probably Enphase on home battery and inverter fronts. Stem is also big in storage and ESS software. I’m also pretty sure there’s a standalone stock that specialises in distributed energy management software but can’t for the life of me remember the name.
It if makes you feel better, I bought my first fraction when it was +$800 Been buying small chunks during dips though so averaged it out a bit and definitely holding
I just bought a fraction at $686, it fell to $677 last night but held out until this morning but it went up to $684 as I had the app open. I couldn’t top up my account quick enough before it rose again, stress
I personally think 700 is still a good entry price but its not very realistic to expect the same kind of explosive gains the stock has seen over the last year. With steady execution from the company I would hope for good ongoing growth in the share price from one year to the next. I would personally be very happy with 20-30% a year. With Tesla though you should expect a lot of volativity, wild swings up and down and be ready to hold for a decent length of time to ride out the drama. Still loads of good things on the horizon (new factories, new products, production growth) so Im personally bullish but as ever DYOR