Ark Invest’s Cathie Wood said her conviction in Tesla remains strong as ever as she kept buying the dip in the electric vehicle company. “Just from electric vehicles there could be… it is almost a fivefold increase in this stock during the next five years,” Wood said during an investor webinar on Thursday. “And if you believe autonomous at all, it’s closer to 13 times during the next five years. So we are as bullish about Tesla as we have ever been.” Wood previously predicted that the shift to electric vehicles will be drastic, resulting in 60 million EVs sold in five years. The innovation investor has been a longtime Tesla bull, seeing shares hitting a split-adjusted level above $1,500 by 2026. Shares of Tesla are up about 3% this year, ending Thursday’s session at $127.17. TSLA 1Y mountain Tesla Elon Musk’s company has experienced a slew of bad news as of late. Tesla’s December sales of China-made cars fell to the lowest level in five months amid the country’s Covid outbreak. Musk’s rocky $44 billion Twitter takeover might have also contributed to the decline as he sold tens of billions of dollars of his Tesla shares last year to help finance the buyout. “Tesla moved down in the fourth quarter, had a dramatic rerating as the capitulation in the growth strategies was highlighted,” Wood said. “The disappointments in China were well telegraphed.” Tesla dropped 53% in the fourth quarter, bringing its 2022 losses to 65%. The widely followed fund manager has been buying the beaten down carmaker for a few months during the sell-off. Wood revealed Thursday that she took some profits in Exact Sciences and put much of those profits into Tesla. Tesla has made big price cuts on its vehicles, first in China and then, on Jan. 13, in the U.S. and Europe. Wood said the aggressive price reductions will help the company stay competitive. “Tesla is going to be very aggressive in pricing,” Wood said. “Tesla can afford to do this. It’s got the lowest cost structure and is innovating we believe the most aggressively. The other auto manufacturers are going to compete. They’ll have to follow these price declines, but it will hurt them from a margin at a profitability point of view quite significantly.”
