[FloorEgg]

Comparing revenue, without at least also comparing revenue growth rates and leverage ratios is really nonsense financial analysis.

It was the same thing with Tesla. Everyone screaming when Tesla had. $20bn market cap how they were extremely over valued because their car sales revenue paled in comparison to the other car manufacturers and yet their market cap was in the same ballpark. It was such a joke and so obviously unprofessional / dishonest. The traditional automakers were all nearly insolvent (tens to hundreds of billions of debt) and had stagnant growth. At the time Tesla had no debt and was growing consistently ~70% a year. Anyone willing to actually analyze and see the truth and not just read headlines and repeat them could have seen it.

[lukeschlather]

I think Lockheed Martin is less leveraged than either SpaceX or Tesla. Also SpaceX just folded in several of Musk's companies that seemed questionably solvent. I really have zero clue how to value the resulting mess of liabilities and highly questionable revenue streams mixed with very solid ones, but $200B doesn't sound unreasonable. $1.6T sounds very high. My intention behind comparing to Lockheed Martin was to presume revenue would double for two consecutive years, which I viewed as reasonably charitable.

[FloorEgg]

I haven't done a financial deep dive into SpaceX since all the consolidation, been focused on other things, so I really don't know how to price it either. It feels overpriced to me too.

That said, I would expect SpaceX to grow at a compound rate much faster and for longer than any legacy competitor such as Lockheed.

[oblio]

Tesla car sales peaked in 2023 and have declined since. They've retired the models S, X, and the CyberCab is barely selling.

Tesla also peaked at about 15% of Toyota sales. Tesla profit margins are now comparable to regular car manufacturers. Robots are a pipe dream. Robotaxis are a decade into the future as a meaningful business.

How exactly does Tesla's market cap make any sense?

[FloorEgg]

Everything you said sounds about right to me.

The point I was making was based on a reference to their market cap when it was $20bn in 2018. At the time there was overwhelming and biased negative sentiment about how it was over-valued at the time that wasn't based on a sound analysis.

Funny enough, I think the answer to your question may be in what happened back then.

In 2018 Tesla had a dominant technological advantage in EVs and a strong brand. There was overwhelming anti-tesla investment propaganda, and history's largest short position against them. When a company is over-shorted and then increases in intrinsic value instead of going bankrupt, those shorts covering will put further upwards pressure on the share price. So for at least a while, maybe a long while, the company will be over valued to correct for the previous over-shorting.