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by lquist 1688 days ago
What am I missing here? Why is spacex valuation 100bn if this is true? I would think it would be 1tn easily in this kind of capital abundant environment. Is the risk that high? Is the market size being overestimated?
2 comments

I'm no financial guru, even enthusiast, but my impression is that your average investor is interested in very short term profit. If you listened to last Telsa's shareholder meeting, one of the top questions was whether Tesla was going to pay dividends! People expect a company that's ramping up faster than any other in the history, building largest factories left and right, to pay dividends to its share holders! I'm in awe how they didn't just laugh the question off and didn't take back the shares from those shareholders (only if they could).
> People expect a company that's ramping up faster than any other in the history

Tesla was founded in 2002, during the same timespan Facebook became ubiquitous in our lives, Google became the homepage of the world and Amazon became the go-to place to make purchases.

Microsoft did even better between 1975-1995. The world was much larger and disconnected back then and yet they managed to became so ubiquitous to reach the monopoly status, such a dominance that the US government had to step in like they did with Standard Oil.

I commute to work daily . 25 miles back and forth and I am lucky if I see one Tesla .

After 20 years the company most successful and ubiquitous product is its stock

Are you comparing software companies to a manufacturing company?

They were making new technology that people basically thought was impossible. By 2012 they had only sold 1000 vehicles. That how hard it was.

Since Model S however they have grown about as fast as any manufacturing based company in history and they have very clear potential to continue to do so for a few years more at the very least.

Tesla basically invest huge into growing a chemical industry to make the batteries. That simply not something that just magically happens within a few years.

> Microsoft did even better between 1975-1995.

Because Microsoft was running on ALL computers designed from lots and lots of companies. Rather the computers were designed for it.

> such a dominance that the US government had to step in like they did with Standard Oil.

They didn't 'had to' they wanted to.

When you advertise yourself as a tech company you are bound to be compared against other tech companies.

More generally companies from every sector are compared against each other to see which one provides the highest improvement in citizens' quality of life .

Tesla produces lots of noise but the improvement in citizens' quality of life is basically none or negligible.

Google, Facebook and Microsoft completely dominate Tesla in this fundamental, during the same timespan.

They are a car company that is slowly turning itself into a multi-faceted company. They are doing some tech like things, but they are also turning into a chemical company and an a equipment and manufacturing company. They are also an infrastructure provider. They want to turn into a robotics company.

> More generally companies from every sector are compared against each other to see which one provides the highest improvement in citizens' quality of life .

Cars are the single largest expense other then a house people make. Of course its gone have less overall impact then a free product that everybody is gone spend very little time on.

The Supercharger network alone and showing the way for EV infrastructure will have a huge impact on everybody.

> Tesla produces lots of noise but the improvement in citizens' quality of life is basically none or negligible.

People usually love their Tesla and that is reflected in the data that is gathered about that. Cars are the second most expensive people buy behind a house. They have huge impact on the people who buy them and clearly less on those that don't.

> Google, Facebook and Microsoft completely dominate Tesla in this fundamental, during the same timespan.

Idiotic comparison, no matter how long you talk about it.

> They are a car company that is slowly turning itself into a multi-faceted company. They are doing some tech like things, but they are also turning into a chemical company and an a equipment and manufacturing company. They are also an infrastructure provider. They want to turn into a robotics company.

And I want to turn into an adonis bedding a different Hollywood actress every night

Doesn't really matter what the CEO of a company tells you about his projections about the future of the company

It will always be an up& to the right chart.

Especially here people should know better and take those promises and straight up throw them into the bin because they are just that.

As the old saying goes: "It takes one to see one".

With Microsoft, Google and Facebook you didn't have to be on the lookout for anything suspicious because they provided very conservatives estimates, begging financial analysts to be conservative for their own estimates too.

That's one huge difference between those companies and Tesla, an other huge difference is the fact that you can tangibly see those companies products in your daily life, whereas Tesla is only famous for future projections of techno-utopian dreams and the stock price which is constantly inflated by the cult leader CEO. The same cult leader CEO who managed to get in this privileged position by overselling equity to bigger fools for his whole life.

That’s not apple to apple comparison. Try other vehicle manufacturers and see where your numbers end up. Ramping up a multi thousand part product with hundreds of suppliers is a whole different ball game than scaling an online website.
> I commute 25 miles back and forth to work and I am lucky if I see one Tesla .

Where on earth do you live? I can barely walk down the street without tripping over one. It's not a stretch to say I'd see several dozen on a short morning run.

Not the original poster, but I'm guessing they live somewhere other than California or New York. The nearest Tesla supercharging station to myself is a two-hour drive away, for example. While I could use one to drive to and from work or to businesses in the area, I won't be using it to go almost anywhere else any time soon. At least, not without planning my routes around that availability. As a contrast, the small town I live in has six gas stations.

I'm looking forward to the day that the infrastructure is ubiquitous enough that I can buy a fully electric vehicle, but that day isn't here yet.

Sure, but SpaceX trades on the private markets, not public. The minimum to get into SpaceX is $1m.
This is flat inaccurate. There people on YT who showed how they got involved for much less then 100k.
> but my impression is that your average investor is interested in very short term profit

You can actually figure out how much of a stock is traded and if your assumption is true then there would have to be far more trading.

> one of the top questions was whether Tesla was going to pay dividends!

How do you know what answer the people who voted for the question wanted to hear?

> How do you know what answer the people who voted for the question wanted to hear?

Interesting point. My intuition tells me that most people who are looking to get paid are the ones asking the question.

I can tell you that the person who got a question in literally every year since like 10 years is a long term investor. See Tesla Daily Podcast.

Long term investors are very well organized and upvote certain questions.

However that question was not from him.

Isn't SpaceX privately held?