Tesla Motors (NASDAQ: TSLA)
Tesla Motors has recently been one of the most talked about NASDAQ stocks, thanks in large part to its iconic Chairman and CEO, Elon Musk. Musk hit his first $165 million payday when EBay bought PayPal in 2002 with Musk owning almost 12% of PayPal shares . With that money, he helped found pioneering companies like Tesla and SpaceX. Tesla Motors is a thirteen-year-old company that builds and sells electric cars and other electric battery related technologies. The company debuted on the NASDAQ stock exchange on June 29, 2010 with an IPO priced at $17 per share . Shares remained below the $40 mark for almost three years until April 1, 2013. Right around that time, Tesla Motors transformed from an inspiring startup to a profitable automobile manufacturer by posting its first positive earnings statement for a quarter. Its stock began skyrocketing as speculation grew about just how big Tesla could become. The amazing run topped out around almost $300 in September of 2014 before starting a seven month slide that sent it tumbling below $200.
In the last two months, however, Elon Musk seems to have changed the downward trend with a single tweet on March 30th. After the stock set a new one year low, he teased investors about a “Major new Tesla product line — not a car” to be announced on April 30th. Bullish investors immediately bit on the tweet and have since driven the stock price back up to the $250 range. The new product line turned out to be a new home power storage system for consumers called the “Powerwall.” It is a collection of Tesla-made lithium-ion batteries like you might find in one of their electric vehicles, but it is meant to store power from home solar panels or power bought from utility companies when prices are less expensive at nighttime.
As with many of Tesla’s forward-thinking technologies, it may be a long time before a product like home power storage capacity goes main-stream. But the new product announcement seems to have reignited larger interest in Tesla’s stock in general, regardless of how Powerwall affects Tesla’s bottom line in the short term. It also has people speculating about Tesla’s next major development, which will be its new Tesla Model X SUV. It is due to start shipping this year.
While concerns over spending and larger market potential remain with Tesla, there are still plenty of reasons to be optimistic. They are making headway in the fight against states that want to prevent them from selling their cars outside of traditional dealerships. And the Tesla Model X will undoubtedly have a larger mass-market appeal with a smaller price tag than previous Tesla models. With most of Wall Street rating Tesla a Buy, now seems like as good a time as ever to jump on the Elon Musk hyperloop train!
