Morgan Stanley maintains Tesla stock Overweight rating

Published 27/01/2025, 17:40
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On Monday, Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) reaffirmed its Overweight rating and $430.00 price target for Tesla stock (NASDAQ:TSLA), highlighting the company's potential in the growing field of embodied artificial intelligence (AI). The stock, currently trading at $399.12 with a market capitalization of $1.28 trillion, is trading above InvestingPro Fair Value, with analyst targets ranging from $125 to $550. The firm's analysis pointed to advancements in general AI and supercomputing as key drivers for investor interest in AI applications such as autonomous vehicles (AVs), electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft (eVTOL), autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), and humanoid robots.

The firm emphasized the importance of passive optical data in creating digital twins of the physical world, which are crucial for training the vision, language, and actuation (VLA) foundation models of physical robots. With the increasing demand for computing architecture to support inference, training, and simulation, there is an anticipated global rush for this data.

Morgan Stanley also noted China's rapid progress in embodied AI, supported by government initiatives and the country's ability to mass-produce key components for AI technologies. This development has implications for Tesla's business in China, especially considering the complexity of civilian environments for AVs compared to military theaters. With annual revenue of $97.15 billion and a high beta of 2.3, Tesla's stock movements reflect its market sensitivity. InvestingPro subscribers can access 20+ additional insights about Tesla's market position and financial health.

Electric vehicles (EVs) were described as the 'sockets' for the upcoming physical AI era. The firm posited that the United States' leadership in autonomy would likely depend on its adoption of electric mobility, especially as geopolitical rivals show advancements in this area. This could potentially increase the market's valuation of Tesla's contributions beyond just the EV market.

Lastly, Morgan Stanley projected Tesla's growth in its semi-autonomous vehicle fleet, estimating nearly 7 million such vehicles on the road by the end of FY24. By 2040, this number is expected to reach 84 million units, translating to a significant aggregate inference capacity if Tesla's hardware capabilities remain consistent. While Tesla is seen as a portfolio of robotics and AI technologies, the firm clarified that it does not currently assign any value to Tesla for embodied AI in its $430 price target or its $800 bull case scenario. Trading at a P/E ratio of 100.75, Tesla maintains a "GOOD" financial health score according to InvestingPro's comprehensive analysis, which includes detailed growth projections and valuation metrics in its Pro Research Report.

In other recent news, Tesla, the electric vehicle manufacturer, is challenging the European Union's tariffs on China-made electric vehicles alongside BMW (ETR:BMWG) and several Chinese producers. The case has been lodged at the Court of Justice of the European Union. Additionally, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has indicated that DeepSeek, an artificial intelligence company, may have more NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA) Hopper GPUs than it claims, a sentiment echoed by Alexandr Wang, CEO of Scale AI, and analysts at Cantor.

In a recent study led by the University of Portsmouth, it was revealed that companies with high-level political connections within their board of directors tend to have a higher market perception of their cash holdings. Tesla's CEO Elon Musk, who has significant political influence, was mentioned in the study.

In recent analyst notes, RBC Capital upheld its Outperform rating on Tesla with a price target of $440, citing potential federal deregulation of self-driving vehicles as a positive influence. Meanwhile, Oppenheimer maintained a Perform rating on Tesla, expressing cautious optimism about the company's technological progress and market strategy.

Tesla's Model 3 recently won the Edmunds Top Rated Electric Car 2025 award, which was positively received by investment firm Wedbush Securities, leading to an increase in their price target on Tesla shares. Finally, Musk expressed concerns about the funding for the Stargate AI infrastructure project involving OpenAI, Oracle (NYSE:ORCL), and SoftBank (TYO:9984), stating that SoftBank has secured well under the projected investment plan of up to $500 billion. These are the recent developments surrounding Tesla.

This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C.

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