If you want to invest like the world’s richest man, Elon Musk — and who doesn’t? — you’re in the right place. We’ll detail some of Elon Musk’s best investments and some stocks he’s helped boost by merely mentioning them.
PayPal (PYPL)
We’ll start the list off with one of Musk’s earliest companies, PayPal.
Musk spent $10 million co-founding x.com, which became PayPal just two years later after a merger. One year after that, in 2002, eBay bought PayPal for $1.5 billion.
Musk was the largest PayPal shareholder when this sale took place, owning more than seven million shares, or 11.7%.
After the company sold, Musk left his role at PayPal and used his profits of about $175 million to fund investments, including Tesla and SpaceX.
Today, PayPal continues to thrive, although, like most corporations, PayPal’s stock took a tumble from late 2021 to early 2022.
But, the company is still growing. In the last quarter of 2021, revenue at PayPal jumped 13.2% over the year before. PayPal also added nearly 10 million new active accounts in Q4.
In 2022, the company expects its total payment volume to reach $1.5 trillion as revenue surpasses $29 billion.
What’s more, PayPal has plans to scale with the release of a new “super app,” that will empower users to pay their bills, put money in a high-yield savings account, and access early shopping deals, rewards, and early direct deposit.
Telsa Motors (TSLA)
Contrary to popular belief, Musk did not found Tesla, but rather he led an early round of financing back in 2004. In 2008, he took on the role of CEO.
Tesla made its IPO debut in 2010 with a share price of $17. Today, Tesla shares trade for around $1,000.
Tesla is on a mission to accelerate sustainable transportation. In 2017, they announced fully electric tractor-trailer trucks would soon enter production. Companies like Walmart, UPS, and DHL have already pre-ordered the trucks.
On the consumer side, Tesla manufactures Model S, X, 3, and a Roadster supercar.
At last count, Musk owned 169.9 million Tesla shares, estimated to be worth $181.5 billion. He is still the company’s largest shareholder and CEO.
Tesla’s most recent quarter topped estimates as the company saw its fourth straight quarter of triple-digit gains. Tesla revenues increased 65% in the 4th quarter to $17.7 billion.
The EV manufacturer is expecting a boom in production in 2022 as supply chain shortages ease up and they launch production in Austin and Berlin.
DeepMind Technologies
Musk was one of the most prominent angel investors when the AI company DeepMind Technologies launched in 2010.
In 2014, Google purchased the company, and today, it trades under the stock ticker GOOGL. It’s been said that Musk did not invest in DeepMind to make money but because he’s chronically worried about AI overtaking humans, and he wants to stay on top of rapid developments in AI technology.
DeepMind’s research is primarily focused on deep reinforcement learning, an AI technique combining deep learning (mostly for pattern recognition) with reinforcement learning. The company developed this kind of learning based on reward signals.
Although this is undoubtedly an incredible AI breakthrough, the company has still not found many commercial applications for the technology. Alphabet has applied the technique to lower power costs from cooling Google’s servers.
Spearheaded by Google, Alphabet is still a strong stock to invest in. In the 4th quarter of 2022, Alphabet revenue’s climbed 32% YOY to $75.3 billion. As operating margins rose, the earnings per share hit $30.69, or a 38% increase.
Altimeter Growth Corp. (AGC)
AGC is a Tokyo-based glass manufacturer whose products are used worldwide in a broad spectrum of industries, including Tesla windshields.
AGC has a $10.35 billion market capitalization. In late 2021, the company announced a successful simulation of chemically strengthened glass fracture patterns using a numerical analysis for the first time in history.
This was made possible thanks to collaboration from the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC). This breakthrough is something investors believe will receive widespread recognition.
Etsy (ETSY)
Although Etsy is not used to supply anything directly to Tesla, and Musk is not a significant investor in the company, we thought it was still worth mentioning as that doesn’t mean Musk is not a fan of the popular indie online marketplace. In January of 2021, Musk tweeted, “I kinda love Etsy,” which shot shares up by 8% immediately.
Etsy is a good investment because it is a cash-generating machine since it doesn’t have to tie any capital up in inventory or transportation – it simply connects buyers and sellers and does not hold any product or facilitate delivery.
Over the past year, Etsy produced $584.4 million of free cash flow on a $2.2 billion revenue stream. What’s more, the company’s net profit margin was just over 20% for the first nine months of 2021.
As e-commerce continues to explode in popularity, Etsy is poised for even more growth, leaving a lot of room for investors to “kind of love Etsy.”
Analysts expect Etsy will produce an earning per share of $3.43 in 2022, a 13.2% increase from the year prior.
Investors are also eager about Etsy’s massive opportunity in international markets. For example, India could expand Etsy’s already massive $1.7 trillion addressable market.
Other Companies Elon Musk Is Involved In
Beyond the companies mentioned above, Musk is famously the founder of SpaceX, an aerospace manufacturer and provider of space transportation and space communications. Most recently Planet.com hitched a ride on SpaceX rockets to launch its fleet of satellites.
Musk is also heavily involved in Neuralink, a neurotechnology firm that manufactures brain-machine interfaces that are implantable. It sounds like a sciencefiction firm, but is very real, and has already implanted chips into monkey brains.
A further company that Musk has championed is The Boring Company, which aims to create fast, low-cost transportation via boring out underground tunnels that allow cars and freight to pass safely and quickly.
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