Tesla Inc (TSLA) and 4 Other Consumer Discretionary Stocks That Have Wowed Billionaire Philippe Laffont

1. Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA)

Value of Coatue Management‘s 13F Position: $1.65 billion

Number of Hedge Fund Shareholders: 80

The number of hedge funds long Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) surged by 44% in the fourth quarter to a new all-time high before dipping by 13% in Q1. Coatue Management raised its Tesla position by 4% to 1.53 million shares, overtaking Rivian in the process to become the fund’s top stock pick.

Supply chain challenges have also been battering Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA), with CEO Elon Musk recently describing his company’s Austin and Berlin factories as “gigantic money furnaces”. Tesla plans to cut salaried staff by 10% as it wades through what Musk expects to be a U.S recession that will last at least 18 months.

Tesla’s Q2 deliveries of 255,000 slightly missed expectations and were well below the 310,000 deliveries the company’s achieved in Q1. It also raises doubts about the company’s ability to hit its 1.5 million target for 2022, with Tesla being just 38% of the way to its goal at the midway point of the year. Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi believes that while 1.5 million may be a stretch, 1.4 million is plausible. Sacconaghi has an ‘Underperform’ rating on TSLA shares along with a $450 price target that is $231 below their current level.

GMO LLC discussed the staggering demand for clean energy materials that EV makers like Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) will have in the coming years in the fund’s Q1 2022 investor letter:

“To put the demand growth for clean energy materials into perspective, let’s look at Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA). At its Battery Day last year, Tesla projected three terawatt hours of lithium-ion battery capacity needed in 2030 for the EVs and storage they expect to produce. To reach this target, Tesla alone would gobble up approximately 75% of the world’s current nickel production and four times the world’s current lithium production. These numbers are astounding enough, but when one considers that EVs currently represent just 15% of global nickel demand and about 45% of lithium demand and that Tesla will likely be producing only a small proportion of the world’s EVs in 2030, the implications are staggering. Clean energy materials companies will make a lot more money in the decades to come than they ever have both because they will be selling a lot more metric tons of material and because there are certain to be shortages where supply can’t keep up with the rapidly growing demand.”

For more on the latest trades made by some of the biggest hedge fund managers in the world, check out 10 Value Stocks to Buy According to Billionaire David Tepper and 10 Defensive Stocks in Billionaire Ray Dalio’s Latest Portfolio.

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