Tesla (TSLA) bull Cathie Wood would not see the EV maker’s recent price cuts as damaging the model. Instead, they might be extra of an issue for automakers attempting to shut the hole, she contended.
“I feel conventional auto producers are going to have trouble keeping up with the worth declines that Tesla’s know-how is enabling,” the ARK Invest founder said on Yahoo Finance Live (video above).
Wood believes the worth cuts stem from Tesla’s price management place in battery know-how. Tesla stays the largest holding in Wood’s carefully adopted ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK).

Elon Musk “completely selected the proper know-how, and I feel others are rethinking it now,” Wood stated. “If they don’t swap over to this type of battery know-how, they will not have the ability to meet up with Tesla by way of value declines with out shedding cash — whereas Tesla’s gross margins are most likely going to proceed shifting up on steadiness, at the same time as it’s slicing costs as a result of its unit volumes, the economies of scale, are going to be so important.”
In early January, Tesla reduce the Model 3 base model by $3,000 to $43,990. The Model 3 Performance variant noticed a value reduce of $9,000 to $53,990.
Tesla additionally dropped the worth for the Model Y Long Range by $13,000 to $52,990 whereas the Performance mannequin was reduce to $56,990, about $13,000 cheaper than the prior value.
EV rival Ford (F) adopted with price cuts of its own to higher compete with Tesla. Though GM’s (GM) CFO Paul Jacobson informed Yahoo Finance this week that he has no plans to cut prices for EVs.
To Wood’s level, the worth cuts seem to have led to renewed demand (and maybe market share positive factors) for Tesla, as CEO Elon Musk hinted at within the firm’s newest earnings name.
But not everybody on Wall Street shares Wood’s optimism on Tesla.
Many professionals assume value cuts will show to be damaging to the Tesla model over the long run whereas on the similar time hurting revenue margins.
“Based on the assertion that [Elon Musk] made on the fourth quarter earnings name, saying that his demand is 2x his provide, you would be foolish to chop value,” BofA analyst John Murphy said on Yahoo Finance Live. “You would simply be consuming into your profitability and never reaching any extra incremental quantity within the close to time period.”
Brian Sozzi is an editor-at-large and anchor at Yahoo Finance. Follow Sozzi on Twitter @BrianSozzi and on LinkedIn.
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