Tesla's robotaxi event: Why this analyst is bearish on EV maker

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Ahead of Tesla's (TSLA) robotaxi event this Thursday, October 10, Guggenheim Securities director of automotive equity research Ronald Jewsikow joins Seana Smith and Brad Smith on Morning Brief to outline his expectations for the event as a Tesla bear.

Jewsikow tells Yahoo Finance he expects “it's more likely to be a sell the news event. I think there's been a lot of hype into this event. We've seen the stock move up. investor expectations are quite high in terms of the promises that are going to be made at this event. And the products that are going to be shown.

"Ultimately, there are a lot of boxes that have to be checked, and we think that a real credible path to robotaxi commercialization in the next 12 to 24 months is extremely unlikely to come out of this event.”

“Our view towards the stock returning closer to what we think is [its] fundamental value. But I would say that a business trading at 100 times earnings, 100 times our next year's earnings, with little to no free cash flow, is really difficult to underwrite without the robotaxi," Jewsikow goes on to say about the EV maker, believing Tesla could refocus back to its fundamentals after this event.

"We estimate US sales were down about 5% in the third quarter versus the second quarter. And while China [region] growth was quite material in the third quarter, I guess we will see the quality of that growth once they report Q3 earnings with the gross margin line item, but it's tough to have any single catalyst from this point.”

Jewsikow raises concerns about Tesla’s new models cannibalizing its existing share rather than capturing more of the market. “We've seen the Cybertruck grow, but it's largely been a function of cannibalizing Model S and X sales. If we just look at Tesla's sales volumes for premium vehicles, I think to see the gross margin inflection in the next six to 12 months is pretty unlikely.”

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This post was written by Naomi Buchanan.

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