ZINGER KEY POINTS
- Tesla's shares have grown manifold from the split-adjusted closing price of $1.59 in its debut session in late June 2010.
- Musk suggests that Buffett had an opportunity to buy Tesla shares when the company's market-cap was around $200 million.
Elon Musk never misses a chance to highlight a lost opportunity for Warren Buffett and, apparently, his musings haven’t moved the investment great yet.
What Happened: This time around, Musk reacted to a tweet by a user, apparently a trader, who shared a dynamic graphic showing the composition of Buffett’s portfolio from 1995 through 2022.
Captioning the tweet, the user wrote, “Watch Warren Buffett portfolio’s growth since 1994 to 2022. A true legend and king of investing!”
In 1995, Coca-Cola Co. made up about 32% of Buffett’s portfolio and cash accounted for under 7%. It was heavily weighted with financial services stocks then.
At one point in 2005, the cash component of his portfolio increased, accounting for over 50%. In 2016, Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. picked up Apple Inc. for the first time. Over the year, Berkshire’s Apple holdings continued to increase, and at the end of 2022, Cupertino’s shares accounted for 36.7% of the portfolio.
The next biggest component was cash, at 20.1%. Bank of America Corp. and American Express Co. made up 10.5% and 5.7% of the portfolio, respectively.
This is not the first time Musk highlighted Buffett missing the bus on Tesla. Just after the release of Berkshire’s quarterly and annual results for 2022, an influencer highlighted the company’s $128 billion+ cash hoard and asked for suggestions as to which stocks the investment guru should buy.
Musk promptly replied that he should consider buying a company that “starts with a T…,” hinting at Tesla. He also went on to say that Buffett’s trusted lieutenant Charlie Munger let go of an opportunity that came his way almost 15 years ago to invest in Tesla when the company’s market cap was around $200 million.
By Musk’s account, he and Munger had lunch together in 2009 and the latter went at length about how in multiple ways Tesla would fail. The tech entrepreneur harped on his point and stated that even if Tesla potentially failed, it was worth trying anyway.
Would Tesla Have Made A Difference: Tesla went public in June 2010 at $17 per share and its stock price has increased significantly over the years. It closed its debut session — June 29, 2010 — at a split-adjusted price of $1.59. The company has announced two splits thus far, a 5-for-1 split on Aug. 31, 2020, and a 3-for-1 split on Aug. 25, 2022.
At its peak price of $414.50 on Nov. 4, 2021, the company boasted of a valuation of over $1.2 trillion. Since then the stock has come off the peak amid fundamental and macroeconomic challenges.