Tesla Stock: Never a Dull Moment (TSLA)

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When you own/follow Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) stock, there’s never a dull moment.

tesla stock motors tsla stockThe most recent chapter in the ongoing TSLA drama was the not-so-new revelation that the all-electric luxury car maker will unveil a new home battery designed to power individual houses, and a larger, utility-type battery capable of providing electric power to larger corporate/power grid operations. This news has helped propel Tesla stock over the past couple of days.

The larger, utility-style battery will be designed to store power from renewable energy sources such as solar and wind. It also will be able to provide supplemental power when sun and wind power sources aren’t available.

The reason the battery launch, at least the home version, wasn’t much of a revelation is because last month, Tesla’s genius CEO Elon Musk tweeted that he planned to unveil a major new TSLA product line that was “not a car” on April 30.

Normally, investors and analysts would have to wait for the April 30 announcement to discover the details of the new battery, but this is Tesla Motors — and Tesla doesn’t do things the “normal” way. Now, due to a letter email sent to analysts from a Tesla Motors executive, Wall Street — and the rest of the world — knows a whole lot about the new battery products.

Tesla Stock: The Returns Will Be Worth the Drama

For Tesla stock holders, TSLA’s branching out into the home and utility battery segment will, I suspect, be a long-term driver of the shares. Sure, the Model S luxury sedan is the sexy flagship Tesla product, but even the most optimistic of Tesla bulls knows the car is likely to remain a boutique item for status-oriented consumers — at least for a few more years.

A home battery, which could be used by just about every household in the develop world, would give the astute Musk a way to “get into” far more peoples’ lives around the world. From a synergy standpoint, a home battery that complements solar power panels of the sort sold and installed by another Musk venture, SolarCity Corp (NASDAQ:SCTY), also makes a lot of sense on all sorts of force-multiplier fronts.

For Tesla fans, and for TSLA shareholders, we’ve come to expect drama of the sort delivered by Musk and company on a rather regular basis.

Recall that in mid-March, I wrote about Musk once again taking to twitter to proclaim that he was about to “end range anxiety” for Model S owners. In this article, I speculated that the move to end range anxiety could be the catalyst that would begin lifting Tesla    stock out of its then hitherto doldrums. The stock had been down more than 12% year-to-date through March 17.

Since the announcement to end range anxiety, TSLA shares are back up more than 12%, and the stock is approaching breakeven for 2015.

It is this kind of drama that makes owning Tesla stock interesting, if not nervewracking.

Then, there’s the drama of following the exploits of Musk’s tweets, the subsequent analyst and trader reactions, and of course, the two distinct camps of Tesla lovers and Tesla haters.

These love vs. hate camps are never shy when it comes to firing salvos, and to be certainm there is plenty of ammunition on both sides to hurl.

For the lovers, the stock’s demonstrated performance, along with the incredible technical innovation and performance of the Tesla Model S (and presumably inside the coming soon Model X and Model 3), as well as the genius stewardship of Elon Musk are reasons enough to own the stock. I am admittedly in this camp.

And though I am a Tesla bull, I also understand and sympathize with the Tesla haters’ camp, which considers the stock a momentum fad devoid of any real comparable auto sales metrics. Consider the company’s tiny numbers when compared to established auto makers such as Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F), General Motors Company (NYSE:GM), Toyota Motor Corp (ADR) (NYSE:TM) and others.

Then, include recent troubles in places such as China, and the company’s ongoing battle with the auto dealership sales model around the U.S. … and there is plenty of reason to stay away from TSLA.

So WHAT If Google Almost Bought TSLA?

Interestingly, both camps got a little fodder for flinging from the recent revelation that Elon Musk was on the verge of selling Tesla to Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG, NASDAQ:GOOGL) back in 2013.

The story, which I highly recommend reading, details the panicked sense that Musk had over needing to deliver the Model S to customers in February 2013.

According to the story, which is excerpted from a new book “Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future,” written by outstanding tech industry journalist Ashlee Vance (due out May 19 from Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins), Musk told employees in no uncertain terms what the Model S deliveries meant to the company: “If we don’t deliver these cars, we are f—ed.” Musk then added, “So I don’t care what job you were doing. Your new job is delivering cars.”

The uncertainty of these deliveries prompted Musk to reach out to his well-heeled friend Larry Page at Google. Musk is then said to have, “proposed that Google buy Tesla outright — with a healthy premium, the company would have cost about $6 billion at the time — and pony up another $5 billion in capital for factory expansions.”

As everyone knows, that deal never went through, as Musk managed to turn the corner, accelerate operations, deliver the cars and then actually post the company’s first-ever quarterly profit just a few months later.

Still, the drama that we are just now discovering is that TSLA stock could have been a virtual dud in 2013 — if Musk hadn’t turned things around. That’s the peg for the haters to hang their hats on.

For TSLA stock lovers, there’s the revelation of the incredible feat of corporate focus and leadership by Musk that helped make the company profitable well before anyone suspected it would ever be.

Oh, and since that perilous 2013 period, TSLA shares are up 323%.

Take that, haters.

As of this writing, Jim Woods was long TSLA.

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Article printed from InvestorPlace Media, https://investorplace.com/2015/04/tesla-stock-tsla-elon-musk-never-dull-moment/.

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