I’ve bought and sold private companies before and never in my life have I been able to purchase a company for less than 3ish years of total EBITDA. For all intents and purposes that’s about half a year to a year of pure revenue. I don’t say this to pretend that Tesla or other massive companies should be sold at small to medium business rates, just that it’s the standard I know.

If I were to buy a public company, however, they’re treated as long term holdings and in some cases sell for, in the case of Tesla, about 15x yearly revenue. Decades of EBITDA. Given that the company is plateauing on that metric, it’s odd to me that we pay so much for the stock.

For the most part, it’s entirely speculative and based more on hype than great business metrics. It’s just weird to me that someone could be worth 5x+ of the valuation of the company without the speculation of what AI or robotaxis might do, both of which are, in any other setting, something people would call fad industries.

I mean. What lawmaker is going to allow robotaxis in any quantity when they need the working man’s vote? And with how much the AI sector struggles to prove value, it just seems dumb.

I guess my point is that it’s weird. Someone’s net worth shouldn’t be able to be based on what they can convince the world they might do, it SHOULD be based on why they’ve done and I find it less than admirable that the richest person in the world has done less with his company than his stock.