Key Points
- An analyst at JPMorgan has reset the firm's view by raising its price target from $145 to $475, marking one of the most striking reratings of the year.
- The move reflects a fundamentally different view of how Tesla should be valued, with the focus shifting away from EV sales alone and toward robotaxis, autonomous driving, and Optimus.
- Several other big names have turned bullish on Tesla this month, suggesting the bear camp is thinning out fast.
- Special Report: 95% of SpaceX profits are already gone
Shares of Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) are down roughly 10% from last month's high and caught between two increasingly vocal camps.
The bulls see a company on the verge of a transformational rerating as its ambitions in autonomous driving, robotics, and energy move from theory to reality. The bears, on the other hand, see a stock that remains eye-wateringly expensive relative to its actual earnings.
For most of the past year, JPMorgan sat firmly in the second camp, holding one of the most bearish price targets on Tesla stock, until an analyst at JPMorgan took a fresh look at the firm's coverage of Tesla.
Rajat Gupta wasted little time in delivering a major reset, lifting JPMorgan’s price target from $145 to $475 and upgrading the stock from Underweight. The magnitude of that revision, 227% to be exact, is a rare sight from Wall Street firms.
Yes, the previous rating may have grown stale, but still, a move of that scale signals something much more significant about the firm’s outlook on Tesla than a simple adjustment.
Why JPMorgan Sees Tesla Differently
The core of Gupta's argument is that Tesla has been systematically misvalued by analysts, including his own predecessor at JPMorgan, because they have been assessing it as a car company. By that metric, Tesla looks expensive, faces intensifying competition, and has little near-term earnings growth to offer investors. But Gupta's thesis is that this framework misses the point entirely.
His analysis values Tesla across five distinct and interlinked markets: automotive, energy storage, robotaxis, humanoid robots, and infrastructure licensing. The combined addressable opportunity across those markets is enormous, and Tesla's position in each of them benefits from a level of vertical integration that Gupta describes as still somewhat under-appreciated and misunderstood on Wall Street.
The key insight is that Tesla doesn't just compete in these markets. It builds the hardware, writes the software, trains the AI, and controls the data, all under one roof. That starting-point advantage, as Gupta frames it, is difficult for any rival to replicate quickly, regardless of how much capital they deploy.
The Numbers Behind the Rerating
The financial projections embedded in this new view are eye-catching too. The firm now expects Tesla's revenue to more than double by the end of the decade, with a significant portion of that growth coming from services and newer businesses tied to autonomy and robotics rather than vehicle sales.
The company’s earnings per share are projected to nearly triple by 2030, a move that, if it happens, would make the current stock price look considerably more reasonable than it does when measured against today's earnings alone.
This earnings trajectory is the key to understanding why the price target has moved so dramatically. If Tesla delivers on its non-EV ambitions even partially, the business's earnings power over the next five years could be substantial. It’s worth noting that, even though JPMorgan still rates Tesla Neutral, its new $475 price target implies about 20% upside from recent prices.
The Bear Camp Is Thinning Out
In addition to the immediate upside suggested by the new price target, what makes Tesla even more attractive right now is that the upgrade by JPMorgan isn't happening in isolation. Goldman Sachs, for example, also upgraded Tesla this month, moving it from a Sell to a Buy rating. Sanford Bernstein and Evercore both shifted to bullish stances.
That still doesn't mean the bear case has disappeared entirely. It must be noted that while many of their peers were throwing in the towel on their bearish ratings for the stock over the past week, BNP Paribas actually downgraded Tesla from Hold to Underperform.
Weighing Up the Opportunity
It’s easy to get caught up in the hype around Tesla’s trajectory, not to mention the possibility of a merger with SpaceX, but the execution risks are real. Regulatory approvals, safety validation, and the challenge of scaling entirely new technologies at Tesla's pace are not small hurdles. Starting this journey with a price-to-earnings ratio of almost 400 raises the stakes even more and leaves little room for error.
Still, if there’s one company and one CEO you’d back to make a success of all this, it’s Tesla and Musk. As we head into the summer, it feels like they’ve managed to finally shift the conversation from being focused on whether Tesla is too expensive to just how big the future upside could be.
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