Musk madness: Why a major investor says Tesla shares will increase 1000 per cent

Just when you thought the lead-up to the US election couldn’t get crazier, Elon Musk has reportedly entered the fray, pledging up to $US180 million ($267 million) to support Donald Trump’s candidacy.

Is there no circus in which the Tesla founder does not want to be a performer?

Elon Musk supports Donald Trump and escalates culture wars.

In the same week, Musk hit headlines with his announcement that two of his other companies, SpaceX and X (formerly Twitter), will move their headquarters from California to Texas.

But it’s this human headline’s reason for the move that is raising eyebrows.

Musk cited California’s new law banning school transgender notification requirements as one of the reasons for the move, calling it the “last straw”.

It’s the equivalent of a nuclear strike in the raging culture wars.

Sure, plenty of companies move their head offices, their operations and even their domiciles, but the reasons are almost always financial. Things such as a better tax regime, cheaper labour costs, proximity to markets or raw materials feature as conventional reasons.

Ideological state-based sovereign risk is a new one.

But no number of controversial Musk moves appears to dampen the ardour of his most trenchant and greatest financial supporter, Cathie Wood’s Ark Investments. (She has also been quoted as supporting Trump for president.)

Ark’s Cathie Wood is betting big on Tesla.Credit: Bloomberg

Wood has stuck with her evangelical support of Musk and Tesla through a roller-coaster share price ride over the years on the back of production and sales issues, and rising competition from Europe and particularly China in the electric vehicle market.

In the 2022 calendar year, Tesla’s shares fell 68 per cent – enough to test the nerve and commitment of any investor.

In the 2023 calendar year, the shares recovered their mojo but have drifted sideways since, missing the enormous rise of tech’s “magnificent seven”.

Sadly for Wood and Musk, Tesla didn’t miss out on the big fall those stocks experienced in the US on Wednesday. Its share price fell more than 3 per cent.

Many investors jumped off the Tesla investment train, believing its first mover advantage in electric vehicles had narrowed to marginal.

But Wood has unfurled a new list of reasons that will not just support the price of Tesla but catapult it into the stratosphere – what in investment circles is called a ten-bagger (a ten times increase or 1000 per cent).

Ark is well known as a fund that sits way out on the other reaches of the risk curve, and Wood’s faith that Tesla’s massive upside sits with autonomous taxis should surprise no one.

As one commentator noted, Wood tells risk-drunk investors what they want to hear.

And her latest message is that the autonomous taxi ecosystem is an $US8 trillion to $US10 trillion global revenue opportunity. Yes, that is trillion, not billion.

Wood conceded to Bloomberg that investors were shifting away from valuing Tesla purely as an electric vehicle maker, pricing in some of the autonomous taxi potential.

She reckons Tesla has the potential to take half that platform business and that “autonomous taxi platforms are the biggest AI project evolving today”.

So rewards may be handsome, but there’s plenty of risk to match.

It has been eight years since Musk unveiled his exciting plans for driverless vehicles – a period marked by snafus and setbacks.

That said, there is plenty of excitement building for Musk’s “robo-reveal” that, previously postponed, is now due for October.

For Wood, the support for an evolving Tesla business is the ultimate article of faith.

Had she retained that kind of faith in Nvidia beyond the fourth quarter of 2022, it would have been richly rewarded.

Selling out early cost her fund (and its investors) an estimated $US1.2 billion.

But regardless of Musk’s erratic behaviour, Wood is prepared to double down.

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