Tesla’s IPO was 15 years in the past. The inventory is up 300-fold since then

On the time of Tesla’s IPO 15 years in the past, the corporate had generated roughly $150 million in income in its lifetime. That got here virtually completely from the Roadster, a two-seat electrical sportscar that boasted a variety of 236 miles on a single cost.

The Mannequin S sedan was nonetheless within the lab, two years away from hitting the market.

“The Mannequin S, which is deliberate to compete within the premium car market, is meant to have a considerably broader buyer base than the Tesla Roadster,” the corporate mentioned in its IPO filing, forward of its deliberate $226 million offering.

A guess on Tesla, which debuted on the Nasdaq on June 29, 2010, was a wager on CEO Elon Musk’s potential to develop a roster of mass-market electrical vehicles and scale an automaker distant from the Detroit auto hub, focusing as an alternative on Silicon Valley, residence to a lot of the world’s prime tech expertise.

Musk did not begin Tesla, however he invested early, served as chairman and took over as CEO in October 2008, after main a board revolt towards founding CEO and inventor Martin Eberhard early that yr.

An investor who put $10,000 into Tesla’s inventory on the time of the corporate’s IPO and held onto all these shares would now personal a stake price near $3 million. An identical funding on the time within the S&P 500 would have resulted in holdings price about $57,000.

Far faraway from its days as an experimental clean-tech startup led by a member of the “PayPal mafia,” Tesla is now the eighth most-valuable publicly traded U.S. firm, with a market cap of over $1 trillion after practically hitting $100 billion in income final yr.

The Roadster is basically within the historical past books, and the Mannequin S is now not of nice significance to the corporate’s backside line. Relatively, it is Tesla’s top-selling Mannequin Y SUV and Mannequin 3 sedan, together with gross sales of environmental regulatory credit, that helped outline the corporate’s monetary success over the previous decade.

However for the 54-year-old Musk (his birthday was Saturday), now the world’s wealthiest individual, that is the previous. He is informed buyers that the rationale to purchase and personal Tesla inventory from right here has virtually nothing to do with promoting vehicles to shoppers.

“If someone would not consider Tesla’s going to resolve autonomy, I feel they shouldn’t be an investor within the firm,” Musk said on an earnings name in April of final yr. He added, “We’ll, and we’re.”

Two months after that, Musk mentioned his firm’s Optimus humanoid robots that he hopes some day will carry out like R2-D2 and C-3PO in Star Wars, might some day raise Tesla’s market cap to $25 trillion.

Musk, who final yr characterised himself as “pathologically optimistic,” has mentioned he expects hundreds of Optimus robots to be working in Tesla factories by the tip of 2025, and that the corporate will start promoting the robotic subsequent yr.

As for autonomy, Tesla at the moment lags behind Alphabet’s Waymo, which is working public robotaxi providers in a number of U.S. markets, and Baidu’s Apollo Go in China. Tesla’s Robotaxi just launched a really restricted pilot service in Austin, Texas, earlier this month, and mentioned Friday it had accomplished its first driverless supply of a brand new automotive to a buyer.

Whereas Tesla nonetheless has its share of fanatics and a largely bullish slate of analysts, Wall Road is skeptical of Musk’s futuristic guarantees or sees them as baked into the inventory value. The inventory is down about 20% this yr, badly underperforming main U.S. indexes and trailing all of its megacap tech friends. Apple, down 19.7% for the yr, is the one one shut.

Earlier in June, Tesla’s vp of Optimus robotics, Milan Kovac, mentioned he is leaving the corporate after a nine-year tenure, and Musk extra lately fired Omead Afshar, the automaker’s vp of producing and operations.

In the meantime, Tesla EV gross sales have been sluggish in 2025, with automotive income struggling a second straight year-over-year decline within the first quarter resulting from an growing older lineup and bustling competitors, particularly from lower-cost Chinese language producers.

New Tesla gross sales in Europe fell for a fifth straight month in Might, in keeping with data from the European Vehicle Producers Affiliation, or ACEA, and Tesla’s latest mannequin, the Cybertruck, has failed to realize vital traction within the U.S. after a sequence of recollects.

Hovering over Tesla’s enterprise is the unpredictability of Musk.

Lengthy glorified for his enterprise success — by way of PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX, mind tech startup Neuralink and synthetic intelligence firm xAI, amongst different pursuits — Musk asserted himself within the political realm final yr, when he endorsed Donald Trump for president and subsequently injected practically $300 million into his marketing campaign and associated Republican causes.

Musk spent the primary few months of 2025 spearheading President Trump’s Division of Authorities Effectivity (DOGE), slashing the scale of the federal authorities and stripping sources from regulatory companies, together with these tasked with oversight of his corporations.

However his pivot to politics got here at a price, a minimum of within the quick time period.

Musk’s vocal and monetary help of Trump, endorsement of Germany’s far-right AfD occasion and prolonged string of charged and divisive remarks and gestures, together with on his social community X and in press appearances, has been correlated with declines in Tesla’s repute, and a drop in his total favorability, in keeping with polling information.

“Except Tesla can provide you with a complete vary of latest merchandise that may actually excite shoppers, and except they’ll mitigate among the antagonism brought on by their chief, they are going to be seen as previous their peak and can start to go down,” David Haigh, CEO of analysis and consulting agency Model Finance, mentioned in January.

Model Finance’s data confirmed that the worth of Tesla’s model fell by 26% in 2024, a second straight annual decline. That was earlier than Musk’s time working within the second Trump administration.

Musk’s official tenure in Washington, D.C., ended earlier in June, simply as his relationship with the president was souring. Shares of Tesla fell 14% on June 5, as President Trump threatened to tug authorities contracts for Musk‘s corporations, escalating a confrontation over the president’s spending bill.

Musk quickly slowed his posting about politics on social media after that, and appeared to focus extra on selling his companies. However this weekend he resumed attacking parts of the invoice that will hamper photo voltaic and renewable power corporations, together with Tesla.

Whether or not Musk is now centered sufficient to resolve Tesla’s issues and, even when he’s, whether or not that is a giant catalyst for the corporate, could be very a lot up within the air.

Musk and Tesla did not reply to a request for remark.

Tesla buyers have discovered that volatility is a giant a part of the story, and has been for the reason that firm’s inventory market debut. On greater than 40 events previously 15 years, Tesla’s inventory has gained or misplaced a minimum of 20% in a single month.

Listed here are the three finest and worst months for the inventory and what occurred to trigger these hefty strikes:

Might 2013

In Tesla’s finest month on file, the inventory jumped 81%. The corporate for the primary time reported a quarterly profit, albeit a really slim one. It did not mark a sudden flip to profitability, as Tesla continued to lose cash till 2018. However gross sales of Mannequin S vehicles topped estimates as did income from zero emission car (ZEV) credit, which have lengthy been a boon for the corporate and have typically been the distinction between 1 / 4 ending within the pink or the black.

August 2020

Following a giant dip within the early days of the Covid pandemic, Tesla’s inventory started an historic rally, resulting in an eightfold improve within the inventory in 2020, by far its finest yr on file. Its single finest month that yr was August, when the share value jumped 74%. Mannequin 3 gross sales had been accelerating quickly, however a lot of the momentum was tied to buzz that the corporate might quickly enter the S&P 500, and a pandemic market boom, when retail buyers poured into meme shares, cryptocurrencies and FOMO (concern of lacking out) belongings. Tesla’s massive announcement in August 2020 was a five-for-one stock split, with the share value having soared properly previous $1,000. Tesla would cut up its inventory again in 2022.

November 2010

Tesla’s 62% rally in its fifth full month as a public firm was as a lot an indication of early volatility as anything. The following month, the corporate would lose virtually 1 / 4 of its worth, wiping out most of these features. Tesla’s money place on the finish of 2010 was precarious sufficient that the corporate warned it might want to boost extra money sooner or later, significantly “if there are delays within the launch of the Mannequin S.” On Nov. 9, 2010, Tesla reported a 31% drop in year-over-year income to $31.2 million and a internet lack of $35 million. Per week earlier, the corporate mentioned Panasonic had invested $30 million in Tesla by way of a non-public placement.

December 2022

Tesla’s steepest month-to-month droop on file was a 37% decline to wrap up 2022, which was the worst yr for the Nasdaq for the reason that 2008 monetary disaster. The corporate confronted a manufacturing halt at its Shanghai facility, which was coping with a recent onslaught of Covid circumstances. Musk had been selling Tesla stock in massive chunks to fund his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, which he later renamed X.

Musk mentioned on Twitter Areas on Dec. 22 that he would not be promoting any inventory for 18 to 24 months. In a debate with a Tesla shareholder, he pinned Tesla’s declining share value on Federal Reserve charge hikes, writing that “folks will more and more transfer their cash out of shares into money, thus inflicting shares to drop.” The distraction of the Twitter deal weighed on Tesla shares, and Musk also pissed off some shareholders by borrowing personnel from the Tesla Autopilot staff to work on his social media firm’s expertise.

February 2025

What was purported to be a honeymoon interval for Tesla, because of Trump’s return to the White Home, changed into an enormous selloff, with the inventory plummeting 28% in February. In its earnings report in late January, Tesla mentioned automotive income sank 8% from a yr earlier and the corporate reported a 23% drop in working revenue. Tesla cited decreased common promoting costs throughout its Mannequin 3, Mannequin Y, Mannequin S and Mannequin X strains as a significant purpose for the decline. Traders additionally frightened about impending tariffs on items and supplies coming from Canada and Mexico, the place a few of its key suppliers are primarily based. With Musk ramping up his political rhetoric, new car registrations dropped in Europe, plummeting in Germany by round 60% in January from a yr earlier.

January 2024

The start of 2024 was virtually as dangerous for Tesla, with the inventory tumbling 25% to open the yr. The corporate reported income and revenue for the fourth quarter that trailed estimates, partly due to steep value cuts world wide. Tesla warned that quantity progress in 2024 “could also be notably decrease” than in 2023, and cautioned buyers that it was “at the moment between two main progress waves.”

There have been numerous different monumental moments for Tesla alongside the way in which and, had Musk gotten his want in 2018, the IPO anniversary could have by no means taken place.

“Am contemplating taking Tesla non-public at $420. Funding secured,” Musk infamously tweeted in August of that yr. Tesla’s inventory buying and selling was initially halted and shares had been risky for weeks. A take-private by no means occurred.

The SEC investigated and charged Musk with civil securities fraud because of the tweets. Tesla and Musk struck a revised settlement settlement in 2019 over these costs. The settlement pressured Musk to quickly relinquish his position as chairman of the Tesla board, a place that is now held by Robyn Denholm.

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