Tesla Net Worth: How Much Is Tesla Worth and Is It Worth Investing?

Tesla is the electric car company that is probably equally well known for its exciting lineup of products and its outspoken CEO, Elon Musk. Yet, the company has proven to be a huge success and is ranked No. 242 on the Fortune Global 500 list. Tesla turned a profit for the first time in 2020, and the company is an undisputed Wall Street darling.

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Tesla Snapshot

To see how much Tesla is worth, take a look at this snapshot of the company’s current state, along with a discussion of the company’s history, value and future outlook.

Tesla’s Market Cap: $607.26B

Market capitalization is simply the number of outstanding stock shares a company has issued times its current market price. Market cap does have its drawbacks as an evaluation method, however. For starters, market cap changes frequently, and it’s closely tied to the company’s current share price. It doesn’t take into account any of the direct financial metrics of the company, such as earnings per share, growth rate or book value.

Share Price and Market Cap

Tesla’s share price steeply declined in the 2022 bear market following astronomical growth in 2021 — a year that saw Hertz agree to purchase 100,000 Tesla vehicles for its rental car fleet and Tesla’s market cap nudge above a $1 trillion market cap for the first time. It’s one of a handful of companies to have achieved that valuation.

The stock is currently trading for over 47% less than its 52-week high, but not because of disappointing earnings. Tesla’s fourth-quarter 2022 earnings per share reached $1.19, surpassing Refinitiv analysts’ $1.13 forecast, according to CNBC. Tesla’s record-breaking quarterly revenue of $24.32 billion also beat expectations. The EV maker finished the year with record revenue of $81.46 billion, a 51% increase over 2021.

Tesla stock rose 5% in after-hours trading following the earnings release, bolstered in part by Musk’s prediction that, given favorable conditions, Tesla could produce two million cars in 2023.

Tesla Stock Split

In a proxy statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission in June 2022, Tesla included a provision for the company to split its stock 3:1. As GOBankingRates reported at the time, the reasoning behind the split was that a stock with a single share price as high as Tesla’s was prior to the split can be psychologically prohibitive for some investors.

Splitting the stock divides it into small shares, each of which has a lower price. A split does not affect the value of each investor’s position.

Shares closed at $891.29 on Aug. 24, 2022, and opened at $302 the next morning, when the split took effect.

Tesla’s Net Worth: $104.24B

Methods of determining the value of a company are wide and varied, each with its own merits and blind spots. The GOBankingRates company net worth is a more conservative valuation than most, taking into account only full-year profits and revenue from the last three years and the company’s assets and debts.

Tesla’s net worth as of the quarter and year ending Dec. 31, 2022, was $104.24 billion.

Tesla’s Founders

Tesla has five founders: Elon Musk, JB Straubel, Marc Tarpenning, Ian Wright and Martin Eberhard. Eberhard and Tarpenning were the original founders, but after Eberhard was ousted, the remaining three were named co-founders after a court battle.

According to Forbes’ Real-Time Billionaires List, CEO Elon Musk’s current net worth is a whopping $219 billion as of March 2, making him the world’s wealthiest person.

Key Product Lines Contributing To Revenue

Tesla’s prime product line is electric cars. In fact, Tesla’s Model Y is now the best-selling electric car of all time — a record that’s probably safe for now considering that Tesla sold over 771,300 of them last year, according to Statista.

In its slide deck for shareholders, Tesla acknowledged its average selling price has been on the decline for years but noted that improving affordability is necessary to become a multi-vehicle producer. Despite the decline in prices, Tesla’s operating margin has risen from -14% to 17%.

Expected Growth

Tesla reiterated the target 50% compound annual growth rate announced in 2021, noting that some years will see higher growth and some will see lower. It expects higher than 50% growth in 2023, with about 1.8 million cars for the year.

However, CNBC reported that when questioned during the shareholders earnings call about why he was forecasting just 1.8 million cars despite having ramped up production in new factories, Musk said, “We’re saying 1.8 because there always seems to be some friggin’ force majeure thing that happens somewhere on Earth. We don’t control if there’s earthquakes, tsunamis, wars, pandemics, etc. If it’s a smooth year, without some big supply chain interruption or massive problem we have the potential to do 2 million cars this year. I think there would be demand for that, too.”

Energy Segment

Tesla’s other operating segment is energy generation and storage. It includes “the design, manufacture, installation, sales and leasing of solar energy generation and energy storage products and related services and sales of solar energy systems incentives,” according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. Deployed solar and storage were up 18% and 152%, respectively, for the fourth quarter of 2022 and 1% and 64%, respectively, for the year.

Current Top Shareholders

The top 10 shareholders of Tesla stock are all asset managers/mutual fund companies. As a group, institutional and mutual fund shareholders own 43.25% of all Tesla shares. Here’s what the top shareholders list looks like:

Any of these shareholder percentages can change at any time, even dropping down all the way to 0%. Tesla is currently a popular stock on Wall Street, so these percentages may hold, but if the company’s fortunes turn sour, institutions may bail out at any time.

How Does the Future Look for Tesla?

Tesla has shown resilience in the face of major obstacles, such as the supply chain interruptions and chip shortages all automakers have experienced over the last few years. Musk is confident in the continued high demand for its vehicles and the company’s ability to meet that demand.

Is Tesla Worth the Money?

Tesla is the ultimate love-it or hate-it stock. Short sellers keep betting the company will go out of business — which seems unlikely at this point — while dreamers and believers see the company as changing the fundamental auto and energy landscape. Therefore, the stock is likely to continue to undergo enormous price swings.

Whether or not you find Tesla to be worth the money will likely depend on which camp you fall into.

Regardless of your choice, share price is just one of the variables you should consider when investing in a specific stock. Your financial situation plays a large part in determining whether or not you should invest in stocks at all — let alone invest in a specific stock like Tesla.

Working with a fiduciary financial advisor is a good way to delineate your investment objectives, risk tolerance and personal financial situation to determine if investing in stocks is a good match for you.

Daria Uhlig and Sean Dennison contributed to the reporting for this article.

Data is accurate as of March 2, 2023, and subject to change.

Methodology: The GOBankingRates Evaluation assesses a company’s net worth based on the company’s total assets, total liabilities, and revenue and net income from the last three years. Base value is established by subtracting total liabilities from total assets from the company’s last full fiscal year. Income value is established by taking the average of the revenue from the last three full fiscal years, plus 10 times the average of the net profits from the last three full fiscal years, and then calculating the average of those two figures. The final GOBankingRates Evaluation number is the sum of the base value and the income value.

Editorial Note: This content is not provided by any entity covered in this article. Any opinions, analyses, reviews, ratings or recommendations expressed in this article are those of the author alone and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any entity named in this article.

This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com: Tesla Net Worth: How Much Is Tesla Worth and Is It Worth Investing?