Tesla's full self-driving isn't prime-time ready: CFRA analyst

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Tesla (TSLA) stock was downgraded to Sell by CFRA's team over the disconnect between the EV stock's fundamentals and value. Shares of the EV developer are ticking higher after CEO Elon Musk bought $1 billion worth of stock earlier this week.

CFRA analyst Garrett Nelson — the analyst behind the call — speaks further with Josh Lipton about his assessment of the electric vehicle company and shares his thoughts on Tesla's full self-driving business.

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00:00 Speaker A

When I have bulls on the show, Garrett, um, in part and I ask them why they're constructive on the name still, they'll talk about the core EV business, which still does drive the P&L here and and the new affordable model on the way, and they're clearly confident that's going to be a growth driver. I'm curious to get your perspective on that.

00:27 Garrett

We're still constructive on the story longer term. So to be clear, this is more of a 12-month call. Um that's that's what we base our price targets on. and so our our 12-month price target is $300. and I think, you know, we're seeing all the red flags that would uh suggest a pullback is is coming here. Um, you know, but longer term, we like the fact that they're in the uh sort of the industries of the future, autonomous driving, increasingly in robotics. There's a lot of reasons to be bullish on the stock looking out 5 to 10 years from now. It's just that the near term, I think, you know, analysts have really overestimated the earnings and there's a lack of understanding just how much of an adverse impact that that law is going to have on Tesla's bottom line starting with the third quarter.

01:21 Speaker A

Can I ask you about autonomous and AI, which you brought up there. Dan Ives over at Wedbush. Now, he of course, bull of bulls on the name, right? He told his clients, Garrett, Tesla is in pole position to be a clear leader in the autonomous market opportunity. The robo taxis, he says set to scale to 30 to 35 cities in the US over the next year. says we believe the AI future of Tesla is worth $1 trillion dollars to the valuation alone over the next few years. What is your response to Mr. Ives there? You agree with that?

02:08 Garrett

I mean, look, there's a lot of reasons for optimism there. In our view though, full their full self-driving where it is today is not ready for prime time. Um, you know, they're only in Austin in in the Bay area right now. Um, and you can go online, find any number of videos that have been uploaded in recent weeks, uh, where, you know, the the the software is taking a vehicle the wrong way, um into oncoming traffic. It's just not quite ready for prime time. And so I think Tesla's going to continue uh to be careful about rolling this out to other markets until it's proven that it is safe and it is ready for uh for mass adoption. But, you know, the other thing I would say is that uh on Tesla's last earnings call in July, you know, Elon Musk acknowledged uh the possibility of a rough few quarters ahead for the company. We think investors should should take him at his word.