Tesla investors shouldn't fret a robotaxi delay: Analyst

Shares of Tesla (TSLA) recouped its losses from the beginning of the year after 11-straight days of gains, only to turn negative after reports of the company pushing back the unveiling of its robotaxi to October.

Deepwater Asset Management Managing Partner Doug Clinton joins Asking For A Trend to give insight into Tesla's recent performance and its delay of the robotaxi unveiling.

"The first thing I would say is nothing is official in Tesla-land until you hear it from Elon himself. Because what sort of led to this event in the first place was a Reuters report several months ago that the Model 2 was going to be canceled. Elon said that that is false. And then he followed up saying that we're going to have a robotaxi event in August. We haven't seen Elon tweet anything yet. I just checked before we jumped on-air here, he hasn't said anything about the event yet, so who knows what could happen." says Clinton

He follows that up with: "What the stock has been doing more recently is it's been reflecting the hype and the excitement that investors are having for Tesla and what might come in terms of this robotaxi and what that ultimately might mean for the model. And Tesla, more than any other stock, is such a powerful religion"

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Asking for a Trend.

This post was written by Nicholas Jacobino

Video transcript

Tesla stock has been on a tear.

It's 11 consecutive winning sessions helped the EV maker regain all of its lost ground so far this year until today, Tesla's Robo Taxi event, one of the drivers behind that stock's recent run up has reportedly now been delayed by two months, sinking the stock back into negative territory for the year.

Join me now is Doug Clinton Deepwater Asset Management managing partner, Doug, it is great to have you on the show.

So let's dive right into this headline, Doug.

So reportedly, uh maybe Elon Musk thinking of delaying this Robo Taxi event, Doug to October, in your opinion, you you know this company so well, big deal, no deal.

How do you see it?

Doug Josh, the first thing I would say is nothing is official in Tesla land until you hear it from Elon himself because what sort of led to this event in the first place was a Reuters report several months ago that the model two was going to be canceled.

Elon said that that is false and then he followed up saying that we're going to have a Robo Taxi event in August.

We haven't seen Elon tweet anything yet.

I just checked before we jumped on near her.

He hasn't said anything about the event yet.

So who knows what could happen?

But let's say that the event is delayed, in fact, to October in my view, what the stock has been doing more recently is it's been reflecting the hype and the excitement that investors are having for Tesla and what might come in terms of this Robo Taxi and what that ultimately might mean for the model and Tesla more than any of their stock is such a powerful religion.

And I think that investors as they see these new products coming, not just the Robo Taxi in October, but probably a few new vehicles as well.

I think people are starting to figure out what could this mean to our models and they were sort of front running potentially some changes in terms of how analysts and investors think about that business.

And Doug, we, we talk about Robotaxis though.

I mean, it's such a, it's such a long term goal in some sense, Doug, I mean, wouldn't it be AAA very long time before you would see any, you know, real meaningful financial impact from that?

I do think that's, that's probably realistic.

And it's funny, I mean, going into the event actually given Tesla's track record but also just what they do, I mean, they solve really hard physical real world problems and they're maybe one of the best companies in the world at it, but often their timelines are a little bit optimistic, they often miss their timelines.

It's just a normal thing with Tesla going into this event, I sort of assumed whatever date they put on their launch of the Robo Taxi, you might want to add 6 to 12 months to.

And then if you think beyond that to the point of your question, Josh, when does it actually start impacting the model?

Tesla has a really large business already in terms of selling cars, they obviously have several 100,000 FSD subscribers as well.

And so the Robo Taxi business would have to get to a pretty decent scale to really start having some impact, meaningful impact on the model.

So I think we could still be in a situation where even if the Robo Taxi launches, let's say late next year or early in 26 the real impact of the model might still be a few years beyond that.

Even investors will start to discount some of that into the model, but we will have to be patient before seeing real numbers in it.