Oppenheimer: Tesla Is An “Existential Threat” To Automakers
Oppenheimer analyst Colin Rusch this week told CNBC that Tesla has proven to be an existential threat for automakers. He said this while explaining his price hike for Tesla [TSLA] on CNBC’s Power Lunch. He points out that “first ground to first car” was less than a year while talking about Tesla’s new Gigafactory 3 in Shanghai. The gigafactory was built in 10 months and began delivering Tesla’s “Made-In-China Model 3” even before 2019 came to a close.
Barely a year ago, analysts and some journalists were pointing to empty space where Gigafactory 3 (GF3) was supposed to be while scratching their heads as to how Tesla was going to turn this “mud field” into a factory. Many thought this would be impossible, and many shorted the stock due to their belief that Tesla was lying about the whole thing. Another thing that Rusch mentioned was the significant number of Tesla electric vehicles on the road, which is more than 600,000 (almost one million, actually), and how they could give Tesla a massive data advantage over its rivals as autonomous vehicle development matures.
Tesla is an 'existential threat' to automakers, says analyst with $612 price target https://t.co/8j5qwvJ2nR
— CNBC (@CNBC) January 13, 2020
Being an existential threat to other automakers seems very accurate, and follows what CleanTechnica has written for many years. This is a flip from what most analysts were saying mere months ago. The corporate and stock roller-coaster ride is caused less by Tesla and more by this type of situation — a lot like climate change — in which people pretend something isn’t real or isn’t happening and end up being blindsided when it clearly does.
Believing the now apparently radical critics of the company, Tesla short sellers have lost $8 billion in 7 months, and many are still shorting the stock. This is more in that timeframe than the short losses on any other company, even Apple, which is the second-largest loss for short sellers (under $6 billion). Reread that again: those who have shorted Tesla have had the largest ever loss on record for short sellers, and many are still shorting the stock!
Some ppl think $TSLA stock keep going up because of the upgrades from the analysts. Some ppl think it’s a short squeeze.
I see it as the majority of the public got fooled by media with bias (bearish) analysts for a very long time with nonsense narratives. Finally awakened.
— vincentyu.eth (@vincent13031925) January 13, 2020
For a long time critics and even many supporters have totally misunderstand Tesla as an automaker and not as a technology company that is fundamentally and dramatically changing both the auto industry and the electricity sector. I don’t think winter is coming for the shorts, I think it has arrived and that this will be a slow freeze. [Disclosure: I hold stock in Tesla, but this is not investment advice and we do not offer investment advice here on CleanTechnica.]
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