James Merryman

Despite a $1.3T market cap, $TSLA has not invested in the marketing leadership needed to expand its business beyond EVs to autonomous driving and Optimus. Without great marketing, $AAPL would not be a $4.4T market cap company. Great products do not just sell themselves through word-of-mouth and the CEO’s posts on X. To increase its enterprise value TSLA needs to invest in long-term marketing strategy and branding in addition to bringing on engineering talent and building product superiority. The strategic mistakes TSLA has made in its EV business — i.e. not launching a TSLA compact (“M-2”) to expand TAM, not launching a conventional pickup truck, killing off the premium Models S&X rather than adopting a strategy to regularly upgrade model 3 and Y customers to S & X as their incomes increased — are indicative of an engineering mindset and highlight the absence of long-term marketing thinking within the $TSLA organization. IMHO it’s why $TSLA stock has significantly underperformed the market over the past five years (TSLA +43%, NDX +96%). Key question: What’s going to change this? $TSLA bulls give management a pass for these strategic missteps. Meanwhile, TSLA’s unsupervised autonomous robotaxi fleet seems stuck at 90-100 vehicles, calling into question TSLA’s 2026 P/E of 195x if TSLA can’t yet scale the fleet for efficacy/safety reasons. TSLA faithful cling to the misplaced hope that SPCX will buy TSLA later this year, which would do little for TSLA shareholders if they have to accept $SPCX equity with up to 50% dilution and an extended deal period.