Ford's P/E ratio is 9.89. IBM's P/E ratio is 14.02.
Facebook's P/E ratio is 40.79. Tesla's P/E ratio is infinity since the E is negative.
I'm sure Ford has done many incremental innovations, I didn't say they didn't. IBM does the same thing, and has "record profits" every few years also. Its just the market isn't expecting the next big thing to come from Ford, while they are expecting that from Tesla.
If you think the market is wrong or too irrational, you can make a killing by shorting Tesla and buying cheap Ford stock.
I don't short stocks because I don't believe in trying to time the market. I actually think Tesla could move well north of where it is currently trading. Not because I think they are going to grow to justify the valuation, but because I think lots of people will look at the $45 billion valuation and will incorrectly compare it to Amazon, Facebook (as you just did), Alphabet, and Apple and think $45 billion is low.
However I am long Ford. In fact it comprises the largest percentage of my personal portfolio. I continue to add more to it with every drop and just added more a few days ago. While the value has been dropping over the past couple of years, I've been collecting healthy dividends along the way ($F pays out now over a 5% yield), and am happy to sit and wait to see how long people will wait for Tesla to move beyond a niche auto maker and into the mainstream market.
Edit: One other point- this recent run-up is attributable to Tesla delivering more cars this quarter than expected, not because they just unveiled some new technology the market wasn't previously aware of. TSLA has been extremely volatile whether you've been long or short over the past 2-3 years. All it takes is one missed earnings report and it'll send this stock down at least 25%.
The only thing happening now is that investors seem to be extremely worried of 'missing the boat' on automated driving. See the big investment in Uber, a taxi company with an app that essentially anyone can copy. But they raised billions on the promise of automated driving.
The only thing here is the idea that the organisation that perfects automated driving first will dominate every transport sector. That seems far fetched to me though.
But hey, I'm just a regular person too. So maybe I'm dead wrong.
Shorting is the way you capitalize on a stock that you think is overvalued. It is an advanced maneuver but can be done for the long term as well.
IBM...man, IBM is a tech company that got rid of most of its R&D to focus on consulting and accounting tricks. But ignoring that, IBM has a huge R&D division but has been unable to come up with any breakthroughs for quite some time now, it is the canonical mature tech company that isn't going to have rapid growth like a startup.
And it makes sense: a high P/E ratio indicates high potential. The lower the earnings, the higher the P/E ratio. But if earnings went negative, then the P/E ratio would automatically go negative (since that is how math works, as you say). So if my stock price is $100, and I earn $1, my P/E ratio is 100...so much potential! If I accidentally lost a dollar instead, my P/E ratio automatically becomes -100 even though not much changed in my earnings.
the market can remain irrational for longer than you can remain solvent!
The likely long-term outcome is for Tesla to be bought out for a pittance (maybe $20-$30 a share? $10 would be surprisingly low, $50 surprisingly high), by a mature automaker interested in the marque; in the meantime, the way to make money off Tesla is to realize that all the people who are zealously pumping their money into Tesla are leaving everything else under-valued.
Tesla is making larger swings and potentially accepting larger risk. Ford is... iterating.
Plenty of other manufactures are doing innovative things with automation, technology, etc. Not to mention most of them can build a higher quality interior/driver experience for far less than what Tesla wants for a Model S
Seems like the most basic, obvious, easy to implement feature but they still can't manage it. Apparently because it's "illegal in Germany" to have a car running without an operator behind the wheel. What a joke.
Tesla will wipe the floor with them.
I know it's not very innovative but if the incumbents can't even do this then how are they going to leapfrog Tesla at, say, self driving?
Electric vehicles prior to the Telsas where research projects and low torque ultralight budget vehicles. Listing the differences between a Telsa and its closest successor, if you could pick one is not an easy task. Listing the difference between an F-150 and and F-150 with and aluminum was already done this sentence the hardest part was spelling aluminum.
You can pick an threshold for choosing what is evolution and revolution, I am just trying to choose a reasonable one.
That's what I'm kinda waiting for - I don't want a car; I like having a pickup. Ideally, it would be 4WD (and my next pickup will be - right now my off-road vehicle is an Isuzu VehiCROSS that I'm pouring money into). I would love it if my next pickup truck was a self-driving, off-road, 4WD electric beast.
But I don't see that happening any time soon - at least not before I get to the point of replacing my current truck.
The market could be wrong, Tesla could fail to achieve their vision, Ford and other existing big companies could somehow turn themselves into organizations that aggressively pursue ambitious new visions.. but the market is betting not. You're welcome to make an opposing bet.
Suddenly we believe in a rational market when it comes to Tesla? Everytime I ask basic valuation questions in these threads, I get touchy-feely answers about "potential". And HackerNews is supposed to be a data/tech place. Imagine what average Joe thinks?
I don't know about 'we', but I don't believe in an irrational market - the market may well be wrong, but it's not usually wrong for unreasonable reasons. And potential is all investors ever care about: they're looking to put their money where it has the most potential to turn into more money. Predicting the future is necessarily uncertain and involves ambiguous judgment; you can call that touchy-feely if you want to be dismissive, but there is no such thing as data on things that haven't happened yet.
In the case of Tesla vs Ford, there is probably a sense in which the longer the market is 'irrationally' convinced of the value of Tesla, the less irrational it actually is - it's a bet on Tesla's viability and vision, and the longer it seems like a good bet to most people, the more likely it is that it is a rational bet to have made.
That said, it's not like they are exactly just making small refinements to gasoline engines, while SV companies are the only real innovators, chasing electric and self-serving vehicles. We just tend not to talk about it as much on HN (compared to Tesla, for example):
https://www.google.com/amp/s/electrek.co/2017/01/03/ford-new...
Ford does normal science [0], Tesla does revolutionary science [1].
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_science [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_...
Tesla on the other hand, has millions of potential customers who would and will buy one once they become a little more affordable and the charging infrastructure becomes more built out. We already saw how fast the pre-sales for the Model 3 went. And that was just people who were willing to put down money on a car that wasn't even available yet.
It's not just about innovation or not. Tesla has a lot of room left to grow. Ford is about as big as it's ever going to get.
Yeah but it's not like people buy one car, and never buy one again. Ford sells over 800,000 units of just the F150 every single year.
Now it's true that they don't have as much potential for growth because they've reached a sort of stable place in the market. Maybe sales can grow a few percentage points year over year but Ford is unlikely to jump by 20% the way Tesla can.
But that's not really saying much as Ford is a mature company with a complete lineup and Tesla is only on its 4th model of car.
But they are already trading at a higher valuation than Ford.
So unless you think that Tesla can command much higher margins than Ford does, then shouldn't Tesla only trade at a similar valuation when they are making similar amounts of cash?
Sounds like they may be trying to compete with Android, Apple, and Tesla on the software side. And QNX has a good microkernel architecture for an automotive OS.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2016/11/03/wh...
Incremental changes is what most senior management folks at places like Ford can do because that is what they teach at MBA schools using linear growth graphs.
Self driving tech is really novelty thing now. And nobody expects it to work anytime soon.
The real deal now is mind-blowing battery tech. Batteries that are rugged, can charge quickly and a car that can give a big range on a charge.
Meanwhile talking of how efficiently somebody can build an ICE based car is really like someone talking about how quickly they can produce horse carriages. Doesn't really matter because that disruption is happening else where.
Apple was making billions in profit on the iPhone at launch. Tesla has never made a profit and sold 70k vehicles last year. Companies like Ford and GM have huge numbers of loyal customers and move millions of vehicles a year and quite profitably. So while it sounds great to pretend that the automobile industry is dying and Tesla is capturing their market share by sheer innovation, the numbers tell a different story.
It's based on nothing other than the weird contempt you see for large, established corporations in the SV crowd. Big established corporation = big established rule book and management hierarchy = stifled innovation. Nevermind the fact that most of the major technological breakthroughs of the past 100 years were developed by the research wings of big corporations (Bell Labs, defense contractors).
Based on committed capital, I think this is at least partially correct.
As anyone who has every used software will attest to: Most of the time, we can count our lucky stars if our commercial software 'works' for a year and a half.
Cue all the: "If Microsoft/Apple/Google/Facebook/Snapchat made cars" jokes.
I've contemplated the idea of my next pickup being a commercial vehicle, if I can get one (as a single unit and not a fleet sale) - which I probably won't be able to, but I can dream.
It seems like that's the only way (except for going used) that I'm going to be able to get what I want: A standard-cab, short-bed pickup, ideally 4WD.
I don't have kids, and won't have kids. I have no need for four doors and an extended cab. I don't need a long bed. I want a short wheelbase. So far, it's either buy a used pickup (back when they made and sold these kinds of trucks) or go with a commercial vehicle (where you can still sometimes find them - sometimes).
The other perk about a commercial version is that they are stripped down to the bone. Nothing fancy in the cab, just the bare basics for a radio, cloth interior, non-electric controls for windows and seats. Basically, eliminate all the fru-fru stuff to make that much more reliable for work-based usage.
In other words, I want a truck to be a truck - not some fancy "I only go to the mall to show off" substitute for a minivan. Add in some basic 4WD with manual hubs (again - nothing to break) - and there ya go. That's my dream truck (ok - if there were a Raptor version of it that'd be nice, too - but I can't afford that, so who really cares).
But you're right -- there are no Chevy S10 or Ford Ranger type pickups anymore. The closest you'll find is probably the Toyota Tacoma, which has more than I would want or need.
So I just got another Corolla. It does have some fancy features I enjoy, but luckily they aren't reliant on the internet to function. And it's cheap.
I, for one, kinda like driving a car that doesn't require an internet connection, doesn't have forced OTA updates, doesn't send analytics data back to base, and won't potentially be bricked if someday the manufacturer goes out of business. Other manufactuers are starting to do the same thing but I'm going to enjoy my "dumb car" for as long as it lasts. Hopefully when fully electric vehicles become more mainstream and affordable there will still be an option to get a "dumb" version.
How? Uber has passed as a software company by making its drivers pay for capital and depreciation. Tesla currently sells physical cars to individual people. They may be aiming for "self-driving," but if they ever get there, there's still the question of who pays to build and maintain the cars. Compared to that, the value of the controlling software seems fairly small.