Tesla is one of the most polarizing companies on Wall Street. On one side, the bulls are all-in on CEO Elon Musk's clean energy vision, but on the other side of the Street, there's a legion of short sellers who believe financial reality will eventually catch up with the company.

Tesla beat Wall Street estimates in the fourth quarter. The company reported adjusted earnings of $2.14 per share on $7.39 billion in revenue, and the stock spiked 7% on the news after hours.

Even so, some analysts remain skeptical of the company’s future.

“Every single year, they've lost money on the net income line — Over those 10 years, they have a cumulative loss of over $6 billion, despite billions of dollars in taxpayer incentives,” Gordon Johnson, founder and CEO of GLJ Research, told Yahoo Finance’s On the Move. “When looking at the facts and not looking at an aspirational story, demand for their cars is collapsing in Europe, the USA, and China as well.”

But HyperChange founder Galileo Russell considers Tesla one of the best companies of the 21st century.

“I’ve seen Gordon pound the table on his $90 price target for years and just be dead wrong,” Russell said. The truth is the financial success of Tesla is actually catching up to the market — the reason why the stock is soaring is because they validated their business model; they've proven they can make earnings positive free cash flow while growing 50% an auto market that's stagnant. They're outselling all their competition.”

Tesla shares have risen by more than 120% after the company’s Q3 2019 earnings update late in October last year. During that time, Tesla had a surprisingly profitable quarter after a slew of spending cuts. The momentum continued for the company, with investors bullish on their new car plant in Shanghai.

“I think there's more exciting innovation happening at Tesla than any other company in the automotive sector by far,” Russell said. “That's why we're seeing their sales grow.”

But despite the stock’s recent rally, Tesla has only shown a few quarters of profitability since going public in 2010. Tesla has only had non-consecutive profitable quarters once in 2013 and once in 2016. The company was profitable again in the third and fourth quarters of 2018, but fell back in the red in the early half of 2019.

“U.S. sales last year fell 3% for the Model 3 in the fourth quarter, and 32% year-over-year,” Johnson said said. “I think they have a disaster of a year in 2020 ahead of them.”

Valentina Caval is a producer at Yahoo Finance.

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