Tesla receives steep price target hike from Morgan Stanley due to predictions of future Uber-style service
Morgan Stanley’s Adam Jonas thinks Tesla’s future lies in a new business model that could make the company’s stock almost double, and may make Uber nervous. In a note published yesterday, Mr. Jonas argues that the auto industry in its current format, “human-driven, privately owned, internal-combustion vehicles”, is transforming, and Tesla is set to “dominate” a new era for the automobile. Basically, Jonas thinks that Tesla is best positioned to benefit from providing an Uber-style service of self-driving, electric cars that are shared by people going to different places. As a result, Jonas and his team raised their price target on the stock to $465 from $280, a 66% increase, and in premarket trading on Monday, the stock jumped 5% to trade near $257.
Does Tesla have a secret plan to disrupt yet another industry, maybe one that even Tesla doesn’t know about yet? Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas is convinced of it, and believes that the potential profits will cause the TSLA stock price to double.

On a recent media conference call, Jonas asked Elon Musk about Uber’s interest in Tesla self-driving cars. Could Tesla cut out the middleman and sell its own ride-sharing services, using autopilot-enabled vehicles? Musk said it was “an insightful question,” but one that he didn’t think he should answer.

“Sometimes you can tell more from the non-answer than from the answer,” said Jonas [if that always holds true, then look for the new Ford line of EVs soon]. He then took that ball and ran with it – in a recent note, Jonas increased his price target for Tesla from $280 to $465. The main reason for the even sunnier outlook? “Tesla Mobility, an app-based, on-demand mobility service.”

The success of Uber, and the rapid progress in autonomous driving technology, are hot topics these days, and Jonas believes Tesla will soon put two and two together and grab the lion’s share of what could be a huge new market. “Tesla is uniquely positioned, in our view, to solve the biggest flaw in the auto industry, <4% utilization, via an app-based, on-demand mobility service,” says he.

“Given the pace of technological development both within Tesla and at rival technology and mobility companies, we would be surprised if Tesla did not share formalized business plans on shared mobility within the next 12 to 18 months,” writes Jonas. “We view this business opportunity as potentially additive to Tesla’s existing model of selling human-driven cars to private owners and see potential for this model to conceivably more than triple the company’s potential revenues by 2029. That is, selling miles in addition to selling cars.”

Source: Bloomberg