Al Root
Tesla can be the Apple of energy, says broker William Blair. That makes the stock a buy.
Thursday, William Blair analyst Jed Dorsheimer launched coverage of Tesla stock with a Buy rating and no price target. A Buy rating at Blair essentially means the broker expects the stock to outperform the market.
Dorsheimer believes Tesla's energy-storage business is an underappreciated asset.
Tesla makes battery packs for homes and utilities as well as producing solar roofs. The growth in renewable power generation and electricity demand from artificial-intelligence data centers are tailwinds for that business. Tesla's energy-storage and generation segment accounted for about 12% of second-quarter sales, growing 100% year over year. (Automotive sales fell 7% year over year in the second quarter.)
The energy-storage business should get more attention as EV sales growth moderates, wrote Dorsheimer. Energy storage combined with robotaxis and robotics -- two things Tesla is working on -- can allow Tesla to have an " Apple-esque" energy ecosystem with Tesla hardware -- cars, robotaxis, and robots -- running on Tesla software in homes, utilities, and businesses.
It's an impressive vision that had Tesla stock up more than 4% in early trading, though most of the gain disappeared by the end of the day. The stock ended up 0.3% at $206.28 a share. The S&P 500 finished flat and the Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.6%.
Still, the upgrade helped snap a losing streak. Coming into Thursday trading, Tesla stock had fallen for three consecutive days, dropping almost 7%.
Earnings from some of its EV peers didn't help. U.S.-listed American depositary receipts of Li Auto and BYD fell 16% and 2.9%, respectively, after both reported second-quarter earnings on Wednesday. Both met or beat Wall Street's expectations, but neither stock could shake fears about slowing EV sales growth.
Slowing growth has weighed on investor sentiment all year, pushing Tesla stock down about 17% year to date through Wednesday trading. U.S. EV sales grew 46% in 2023 from 2022, but sales in the first half of 2024 grew only about 7% from a year ago. Tesla sold about 304,000 cars in the first half of the year to Americans, down about 10% from a year ago.
European EV sales fell about 6% year over year in July. Year to date, sales are up just 1% from a year ago, after growing about 28% in 2023. All-electric cars account for about 13% of all new-car sales in Europe. In the U.S. that number is about 8%.
Polestar Automotive might have helped allay concern about slowing growth on Thursday. The company announced second-quarter deliveries of 13,150, up 82% compared with the first quarter. First-half sales exceeded 20,000 units and management said in its news release that the second half of the year should be better.
Polestar shares closed up 13.2%.
For Tesla, 40% of analysts covering the stock rate shares at Buy, according to FactSet. The average Buy-rating ratio for stocks in the S&P 500 is about 55%. The average target price for Tesla stock is about $216.
Write to Al Root at allen.root@dowjones.com
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August 29, 2024 16:35 ET (20:35 GMT)
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