Tesla Motors Inc (TSLA) Worth a Mere $5 Billion to $10 Billion, Five Times Overvalued Says Analyst

Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA)’s rosy valuation of just over $35 billion is generally accepted as fair by most analysts. Vilas Capital CIO and CEO John C. Thompson is not one of them. Speaking on CNBC yesterday, the analyst said Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) is greatly overvalued, comparing their valuation to several other companies and expressing incredulity over it.

“It’s worth 5 or 10 billion dollars, not 35 billion. I mean Tesla’s got a bigger market cap than John Deere. It has twice the market cap of Fiat, and as Phil just said, Fiat owns Chrysler, Maserati, Ferrari, and obviously Fiat. You know, it’s such a big market cap that I don’t see how they can, in any reasonable time-frame, live up to that valuation,” Thompson said.

Thompson is clearly befuddled by Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA)’s valuation, which was defended in the same segment by Cole Wilcox of Longboard Asset Management, who have recently taken a position in Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) again, as much for the stock’s clear upward momentum, as for any sense that they’ll actually live up to that valuation one day.

“We have to remember, the markets can stay irrational a lot longer than the short sellers can stay solvent. So for us, we’re looking and came back into the stock, we made a lot of money on the move from 35 to 200, we stepped aside, we’re back in it, and it’s not a valuation trade, it’s ‘I like stocks that go up and make new highs’, and you know, this thing seems to have a lot of juice, and you’re going into a new product cycle, the Model X,” Wilcox said.

Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) enters the day at a hefty $281.19, giving it a market cap of $35.41 billion after a 6.57% gain yesterday on the strength of a $400 price target revealed by Stifel Nicolaus, which previously had a hold rating on the stock.

Disclosure: none