2 Stocks to Watch: Tesla and Chevron

  Image Source: Tesla By Brian Nelson, CFA  With the 10-year Treasury rate reaching 5% in recent trading sessions, investors have been laser-focused on this benchmark rate that is commonly used as the foundation to estimate both the cost of debt and the cost of equity to discount future expected free cash flows within equity valuation models. We’re not going to prognosticate on the future direction of the 10-year Treasury rate, but we’re also not concerned about current rate levels either, given that our 10-year Treasury rate assumption within our discounted cash flow models is roughly ~4.3%, a level that we had maintained even when the 10-year Treasury rate was much lower years ago. Though it’s difficult to shift away … Read more

Tesla Scaling Up Nicely

Image Shown: Tesla Inc is steadily working towards bringing another manufacturing facility online in the US, this time near Austin, Texas. Image Source: Tesla Inc – Shareholder Letter Covering the First Quarter of 2021 By Callum Turcan Electric vehicle (‘EV’) giant Tesla Inc (TSLA) continues to impress as it smashed past consensus top- and bottom-line estimates when it reported first quarter 2021 earnings on April 26. The company delivered 184,800 vehicles (182,780 Model 3/Y variants and 2,020 Model S/X variants) and produced 180,338 vehicles in the first quarter of this year, though we note that Tesla only produced Model 3/Y variants last quarter and Model S/X vehicle deliveries were met via its inventory. In the first quarter of 2021, Tesla’s … Read more

The Electric Vehicle (EV) Market Is Hot and Getting Hotter

Image Shown: A look at Tesla Inc’s new Gigafactory factory (Model Y body shop) in Shanghai, China. Image Source: Tesla Inc – Third Quarter of 2020 IR Earnings Presentation By Callum Turcan The electric vehicle (‘EV’) market is hot and getting hotter. Aided by a combination of supportive government policies such as subsides for EVs (purchase tax credits, manufacturing tax credits), plans to ban the sale of automobiles powered by internal combustion engines (‘ICE’) in the coming years, and shifting consumer preferences (households preferring to appear “green”), the long-term outlook for EV sales is quite bright. Tesla Inc (TSLA) is the posterchild of the EV boom given its first-mover advantage, though competitive headwinds are rising. Legacy auto manufacturers are looking … Read more

Stock Market Outlook for 2021

By Valuentum Analysts February 8, 2021 2020 was one for the history books. We covered our thoughts and reflections on the past year in our “2020 Won’t Soon Be Forgotten” article (link here), and now we are looking towards the future. Global health authorities should be able to bring an end to the ongoing coronavirus (‘COVID-19’) pandemic sooner than many had expected as several vaccines have already been improved for emergency use and several others appear increasingly likely to get approved. Global vaccine distribution activities are currently underway, and this should allow the world to slowly return to pre-pandemic activities. Before then, immense stimulus measures launched primarily in developed nations should support global economic activities until the public health crisis … Read more