Morgan Stanley’s lead auto analyst Adam Jonas cut his price target for Tesla’s stock to $242 from $245 on Wednesday.
Tesla shares were trading up slightly, about 2% to $195 Wednesday afternoon.
Jonas has been a reliable Tesla bull, but he’s wrestling with some of the electric automaker’s recent moves, as well as CEO Elon Musk’s projections for the future.
For starters, Jonas said in a note to clients that Tesla’s destiny lies with building vehicles and moving people around:
We continue to believe the ultimate outcome of Tesla’s fundamental direction and share price performance will be dominated by its core automobile and transportation business. At a high level, we view Tesla’s share price as influenced by 3 main factors: (1) The quality and appeal of its cars, (2) the pace of cash consumption, and (3) the company’s ability to access capital markets to fund ambitious investment and growth objectives. We see the current business of selling high performance electric cars as largely a funding strategy. The bigger mission remains developing a sustainable transportation ecosystem.
Of course, Tesla isn’t just a transportation company any longer; it just completed a merger with SolarCity, and the last time we saw Musk giving a presentation, he was trying to sell us a new solar roof.
