Time magazine published its list of 100 most influential companies recently. On the list: Ford Motor and Rivian Automotive, and Chinese electric-vehicle maker BYD.
Not on the list: Tesla.
The snub has been noticed by Tesla (ticker: TSLA) bulls. Future Fund Active ETF (FFND) portfolio manager Gary Black tweeted out Wednesday evening: “Very sus.” That is short for suspect.
He has a point. Like it or not, Tesla is the world’s most valuable car maker by a very wide margin. The company has ushered in the era of electric vehicles, and its strategy has been either praised or emulated by global auto makers ranging from Volkswagen (VOW3.Germany) to General Motors (GM).
All the U.S. companies that achieved trillion dollar market caps made it on the list: Alphabet (GOOGL), Amazon.com.
Still, Time seems to acknowledge the importance of the car business, with three auto makers on the list. Cars, after all, generate trillions in annual economic activity while employing millions around the globe. Vehicles also account for roughly 15% of all global carbon-dioxide emission. Carbon dioxide is the atmosphere’s greenhouse gas blamed for climate change. About Ford, which the magazine lists in the Titans category, Time notes the company is going all out to electrify its products. That is true. Ford has announced billions in spending for EV assembly and battery capacity. The company plans to have enough capacity to manufacture two million EVs by 2026.
BYD isn’t a household name, but it is one of the five most valuable auto makers on the planet, making cars, buses, and batteries. Tesla actually shows up in BYD’s write-up as a competitor in China.
BYD is in the Titans category with Ford. Rivian (RIVN) is in the innovator category. Time detailed Rivian’s struggles to ramp up production, which is probably the number one thing investors are watching in 2022. Rivian plans to make about 25,000 vehicles in 2022. At the start of the year, Wall Street was hoping for about 40,000. Rivian stock has suffered due to that disappointment. Coming into Thursday trading, shares are down about 50% year to date, far worse than the 3% comparable drops of both the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average, and worse than the 4% year-to-date gain in Tesla stock.
Time, of course, has significantly acknowledged Tesla recently. Elon Musk was its “Person of the Year” in 2021. Musk has also appeared on Barron’s list of best CEOs for the past two years. Barron’s recognized his disruption in two businesses—cars and rockets. Musk also runs SpaceX, the company that pioneered reusable rockets and that now owns about two-thirds of all the satellites orbiting earth. (AZMN), Meta Platforms (FB), Microsoft (MSFT), and Apple (AAPL). Just not Tesla.
SpaceX, in private markets, is valued at roughly $100 billion. That is more than either Ford or Rivian, and roughly the same as aerospace giant Boeing (BA). SpaceX didn’t make Time’s list either. Axiom Space did though. It’s building a commercial space station. So did Astroscale. It’s a company dedicated to cleaning up space junk. In the end, lists exist partly to get people talking. This one certainly will.
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