Tesla: Why I’m Long $ELON, not $TSLA

Elon Musk is closing in on being the richest person in the world. He’s filthy rich for good reason. Elon has so many different things in the works right now, it’s staggering. Tesla, Hyperloop, SpaceX, Solar City, Neuralink, etc… When I posted the below tweet, I got a lot of feedback on others personal rankings of Elon. In many cases, people were a lot higher on SpaceX than I was. I get that, but I respectfully disagree. Space is cool, but it’s just too far out for me.

I have two reasons for writing this:

1. To get people riled up (I like poking bears and people LOVE SpaceX)
2. To drive home the point that Elon is bursting with optionality, but Tesla isn’t

I love Tesla (not at this valuation), but one point I often struggle with is the idea that Tesla is a company with tons of optionality. I hear things like robo-taxis, insurance companies, batteries, etc… but my question is, where do I see those in the P&L? I don’t. I see some energy generation (not much and not growing). Tesla was founded 17 years ago, yet I don’t see any real optionality in the P&L. Like SpaceX, it’s all a pipe dream. Pipe dreams can come true and I would never bet against Elon (and his cult), but I prefer to see some sort of optionality in the P&L before I add an optionality scalar to Tesla’s multiples.

P.S.

I know the hyperloop is a pipe dream too, but for some reason it feels so much closer to me. Long term travel hasn’t had any real improvements in decades, but hyperloop could be that improvement. I would love to travel to another city in a matter of minutes instead of hours. Cities are dying and hyperloops could be what saves them. Connecting cities together strengthens them all.