Shocking Differences Between Tesla & 20 Top Automakers — Market Cap vs. Revenue & EBIT

I ran across some shocking comparisons tonight. Apparently, someone shared the other day that Tesla’s market cap is higher than the combined market caps of the next 20 automakers. We’ve written about this kind of thing in the past, but it has been a while and I didn’t realize Tesla’s market cap ($1.4 trillion) had risen to this level — a higher amount than the market cap of Toyota, BYD, Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz, Suzuki, Volvo, BMW, GM, Volkswagen Group, Mahindra, Ford, Porsche, Hyundai, Honda, Daimler Truck, Kia, Stellantis, Bajaj Auto, and Suzuki combined ($1.2 trillion). Stunning.

George Noble decided to add on to that by comparing these companies’ revenue and EBIT. Here are how things compare:

• “$TSLA revenues $98B vs $2.244T for the other 20 automakers combined.”
• “$TSLA EBIT $7B vs $144B for the other 20 combined.”

Noble summarizes: “So let me get this straight. $TSLA is worth more than the other 20 automakers combined. However the other 20 companies combined generate 23x in revenues and 20x in EBIT. Sounds about right.”

That is shocking, is it not?

However, none of those companies are developing robots that will wipe out poverty and perform surgery on anyone when they need it…. Or something like that. Here’s what Elon Musk said on the Tesla quarterly conference call yesterday on that matter:

“You can actually create a world where there is no poverty, where everyone has access to the finest medical care. Optimus will be an incredible surgeon, for example. And imagine if everyone had access to an incredible surgeon.”

Someone else posted an interesting graph showing that Tesla’s operating margin has been declining quite consistently in the past three years.

That doesn’t look good. It’s still well above 0%, but the financial trend, again, isn’t good.

One of two things has to happen: 1) Tesla has to do things that really break through and make its $1.4 trillion market cap half-sensible, or 2) if this is a bubble built on hype much more than Tesla’s actual business, the bubble has to pop eventually. Right?