aswathdamodaran.blogspot.com · 2020-02-06 · 2310d

A Do-It-Yourself Valuation of Tesla: Building Your Own Investment Thesis

This article presents a comprehensive DIY valuation framework for Tesla, breaking down the company's value into four key levers: growth (revenue projections), profitability (operating margins), investment efficiency (sales-to-capital ratio), and risk (cost of capital and failure probability). The author provides industry benchmarks across automotive and technology sectors, allowing readers to construct their own valuation scenarios and explicitly acknowledges that valuation is story-dependent rather than deterministic. The article emphasizes disciplined value investing over momentum trading and cautions against cherry-picking optimistic assumptions without considering their internal consistency.

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Metrics in this report

Cost of Capital

7.58percent

median

All publicly traded companies globally at start of 2020

Cost of Capital

6.94percent

median

Auto industry globally

Cost of Capital

8.86percent

median

Technology industry globally

Global Auto Industry Revenue

2.46trillion USD

Collective 2019 revenues of all publicly traded auto companies worldwide

Operating Margin

19.87percent

average

FAANG stocks (Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google, Netflix) plus Microsoft in 2019

Revenue

260billion USD

Apple 2019 annual revenues

Revenue

129billion USD

Microsoft 2019 annual revenues

Revenue Growth Rate

3.5percent CAGR

average

Global auto industry over last decade (2010-2019)

Sales to Invested Capital

1.37ratio

median

Global auto companies at start of 2020

Sales to Invested Capital

2.42ratio

top-quartile

Most capital-efficient auto companies (75th percentile)