In most respects, the latest note from Adam Jonas at Morgan Stanley on Tesla has been more of the same.
You've got your bona fide comedy, as Jonas starts his note by saying "Let’s begin with a healthy dose of intellectual honesty on the starting point for the stock," before defending his $900 price target on the name...
You've got your "pie in the sky" style lofty estimates about a SaaS revenue stream that doesn't exist and that the company likely doesn't even have the infrastructure for...
All told, it was a pretty standard Adam Jonas ticker tape parade for the company.
But tucked into what can only be described as the "endless optimism" of Jonas' note was an interesting point that the analyst made.Namely, he appears to make the suggestion that CEO Elon Musk's latest obsession with bitcoin is indicative that Tesla's underlying business could be going through a "dry spell".
"Over the past couple of months, incoming client interest on Tesla is focused mostly on Chinese sales/production data and Elon Musk’s tweets regarding Bitcoin. Might Tesla-Bitcoin fever may be telling us something about the lull in Tesla sentiment?" Jonas asks toward the beginning of his note.
He continues:"You just know it’s a rather dry spell for Tesla when Bitcoin is the dominant new story and dominant driver of investor discussion day in, day out.In our opinion, what’s considerably more interesting than ‘decoding’ the TSLA-Bitcoin relationship is the fact that there is a virtual ‘vacuum’ of developments and news related to other areas of technological and commercial progress that the company is involved with on renewable energy, storage networking and transportation."
He begrudgingly concludes about Tesla's underwhelming Model S Plaid unveil: "Yes, the Model S Plaid unveil was fun, but where’s the next ‘big’ development to move the company forward?"
The lines even stood out CNBC's Carl Quintanilla who pointed it out early this morning.
