Taking this in decreasing order by sales. Tesla makes cars and battery storage products. The utility battery storage business (Megapack) is very profitable and growing fast. The residential (Powerwall) business started strong, but no longer stands out among its competition.I don't think Tesla cars are the best achievement of humanity. The Tesla company does more than build Tesla cars. They make batteries, solar panels, robots, and AI. That's just the list of the things that we know of. See: https://www.tesla.com/about
The Supercharger network is probably profitable on an operating basis, but break even at best when including capital expenditures, which may be why Musk recently sharply curtailed new build outs.
Their solar panel business has largely been a failure, but at least it exists.
Tesla does not make AI or robots. They make claims about AI and robots and autonomous driving that apparently enough people believe to keep their P/E ratio a large multiple of what other automobile manufacturers can achieve. Although that multiple has fallen rather spectacularly over the past 5 years. Partly this is for the good reason that the E has grown, but, in my opinion, the rest of the decline is that people have gradually been coming to the understanding that the AI and robotics promises are unlikely to be fulfilled. At least on the claimed timeline.
Neuralink and The Boring Company are basically PR stunts with no apparent paths to becoming viable commercial entities.The Tesla company is, to my knowledge, the only one of Elon Musk's companies that is publicly traded. His other ventures are:
The Boring Company
Neuralink
SpaceX
Starlink
Starlink and SpaceX are both real, innovative and profitable. Starlink is a part of SpaceX though and neither will be publicly traded for the foreseeable future unless Musk is willing to drop his dream of colonizing Mars which is something outside shareholders would not stand for.
Starlink can't be spun off for many years, if at all, since its profitability depends on SpaceX launching its satellites at cost. If it had to pay SpaceX's standard launch rates, it would never have been able to build out its current constellation.
IMO, a Starlink spin-off would come only after it has largely built out however many shells of satellites the FCC will allow and (if) the continued development of Starship eventually makes it cheap enough to launch the necessary replacement satellites even at arms length pricing.
Line them up by decreasing competitive advantage and you've got:
Space launches - nobody is even close. Basically the only "competition" comes from governments who are willing to subsidize their own systems to keep from being fully dependent on SpaceX and startups largely relying on investor cash and hope.
Starlink - fast, remote Internet that's good enough for most users and not much more expensive than fiber connections is a niche, but a profitable one. Apparently even more profitable is providing certain government agencies and large commercial enterprises with guaranteed availability in places where there are no other high(ish) speed options.
Megapack - vertical integration is very helpful here.
Electric cars and Powerwall - solid competitors in increasingly crowded fields
Solar panels - minor competitor in a cutthroat field
Everything else - hype and hope
Statistics: Posted by Alex Frakt — Sun Oct 20, 2024 12:05 am — Replies 149 — Views 7285