It's been a funny year for investors and shares of Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA). This year, it has broken its long track record of delivering outperformance even when the broader market is rallying—and broken well. While the benchmark S&P 500 index is up an impressive 15% this year already, shares of the electric vehicle (EV) giant are down 20%.
Investors would have been forgiven for thinking that Tesla's downtrend, which started more than two years ago, would have been firmly broken by now. After all, inflation, the curse of consumer products like EVs, has been retreating since last year. Expectations have been rising for a cut to interest rates; broadly speaking, the general market sentiment has not been this risk-on since the manic highs of 2021.
Tesla’s Underperformance: Navigating Challenging EV Market Conditions
Given Tesla's strong past performance during tough times, their underperformance this year is striking. However, several factors have combined to create challenging conditions for the EV sector.
The big issue has been a marketwide cooling of demand for EVs, which has been compounded by Tesla's efforts to cut prices. This has, in effect, done little to move the needle. Instead, the company's margins have contracted while its revenue outlook has darkened. A horrible earnings report at the end of April, which missed analyst expectations across the board, was only the latest confirmation that Tesla is in a very deep hole.
However, there are reasons to think it has started to dig itself out of this hole. Since hitting a 52-week low in the aftermath of that report, Tesla shares have only gone up, tacking on more than 40% in the past two months. While it has a long way to go to start beating the S&P 500 on the year, against the latter's 9%, it's an impressive run.
Tesla Shares Get Bullish Boost from Analyst Upgrades
Simultaneously, a wave of analyst upgrades to Tesla shares has continued to gain momentum, with several coming this past week alone. The teams at Cantor Fitzgerald and New Street Research both reiterated their Buy ratings on Tesla, with price targets of $230 and $235, respectively. From the $197 that Tesla closed at on Thursday night, that's pointing to an impressive upside in the near term of around 20%.
But the most significant, most recent, and most impressive update came from Stifel on Wednesday. They initiated their coverage of Tesla with a solid Buy rating along with a $265 price target. That's a targeted upside of more than 30% from current levels, an outlook that's all the more bullish when you consider how much Tesla's stock has already rallied in recent weeks. Hitting that in the coming weeks would have the stock at its highest level of 2024 and close to last year's high. The multi-year downtrend, which has been bottoming since April, would almost certainly be decisively broken and replaced by a fresh uptrend.
Downward Revisions Over? Tesla Primed for a Fresh Rally
In effect, we're talking about the potential mother of all comeback rallies. Stifel's bullishness is based on the strength of Tesla's global supply chain, along with its manufacturing cost advantage and potential to return to strong margins.
Stifel analyst Stephen Gengaro believes the company is in an excellent position to deliver multi-year growth through 2027, helped in large part by upcoming revamps to their product lineup. Finally, there's the fact that, in his view, the recent run of downward revisions to their earnings estimates has essentially baked in the worst-case scenario for the stock price. It will be very difficult for Tesla to disappoint from here, and in many ways, the way forward to a fresh rally hasn't been this clear in years.
