Tesla’s Battery Day left some on Wall Street disappointed, but CNBC’s Jim Cramer said Wednesday investors who want to buy shares of the electric-vehicle maker should remain patient.
The stock closed Wednesday’s session down over 10%, at around $380 per share.
“I’ve liked it from $66, but the runup into Battery Day has to be burned off, and at $380 we’re not there yet,” the “Mad Money” host said. “Don’t give up, though. Give it some time, and we’ll get to a level where I’ll tell you, you can pounce again.”
Cramer said he believes much of the reason people came away from Tuesday’s Battery Day feeling underwhelmed is simply sky-high expectations. He said there were some who thought Tesla CEO Elon Musk would officially unveil the so-called million-mile battery, but that did not happen.
Musk did, however, say the company was “confident” it can manufacture a $25,000 car in “about three years from now.” He said the cheaper car will be made possible by advancements the company is making on batteries and production, in part by designing and producing its own battery cells in-house.
“If there hadn’t been all of this hype about a million-mile battery, those would have been huge positives, and they were for me. But because expectations were so high, Tesla’s Battery Day was viewed as a disappointment,” Cramer said. “I think it’s rather crazy. There was nothing disappointing about it.”
The prospect of a cheaper Tesla vehicle, in particular, could be an important development for the company, according to Cramer, who had been a relative skeptic of the Musk-led firm but began to turn bullish late last year. In December, he declared outright, “I’m a true believer in Tesla.”
A standard-range Tesla Model 3 currently starts at $37,990, according to the company’s website. But if Musk can find a way to sell an electric vehicle at $25,000, the potential upside is massive, Cramer said. He added, it “could be as revolutionary as the Model T when Henry Ford … built 15 million of them — it was the first time regular people could afford a car.”
Tesla’s stock has been on a massive run in 2020. It is up about 354% year to date and nearly 690% in the past 12 months.
The stock reached an all-time high of $502.49 on Sept. 1 but has experienced weakness since then, giving back about 24%, including Wednesday’s decline.
However, that pullback Wednesday isn’t necessarily a surprise given where the hype was headed into Tuesday’s event, Cramer contended.
“Tesla comes out with a plan to build an electric car for the masses, and it’s greeted with a yawn because Musk didn’t roll out a magic battery,” he said. “That’s what happens when the expectations get out of control — nobody cares about all these new positives, they’re just bummed that the things hyped didn’t happen. So of course the stock gets crushed.”
But, Cramer added, “I love the news, even if we won’t see the results for a couple of years.”
