Tesla stock is still ‘egregiously overvalued’: Analyst

Shares of Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) have been cut in half this year but a Roth Capital Partners’ analyst still does not see them as attractively valued.

The bear case for Tesla stock

According to Craig Irwin, the leading U.S. electric car manufacturer should not be worth more than $85 a share – that’s down another 50% from here. On CNBC’s “Squawk Box”, he said:

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I’ve seen Tesla as egregiously overvalued for about a year and a half. Elon Musk is a very talented executive; Tesla is a very important company but I don’t believe it’s worth more than a company like Toyota.

Part of the reason for the sell-off, especially more recently, is concern that the billionaire chief executive is distracted following his $44 billion buyout of Twitter.

But the Tesla stock is grossly overvalued even without that overhang, Irwin added.

Tesla is just an automobile company

Reason why bulls value Tesla stock as more than a typical, run-of-the-mill automobile company is because they see it as much more than that.  

The idea is that the multinational will eventually turn into an autonomous driving company that will change transportation as we know it or perhaps into a solar business. But Irwin does not buy into any of that.

I think those are false arguments. I don’t see robo-taxis anytime soon. There’s a lot of other things people point to – software etc., I don’t think Toyota, Porsche, Daimler, or someone else can’t do that.

Nonetheless, Tesla had record operating profit in its latest reported quarter as Invezz published here.