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watch nowVIDEO07:02Options trades for this automaker are cheap ahead of major October announcementsOptions Action
Teslas are expensive cars, and the Roadster, which the company will reveal on October 1st, will likely be the its most expensive, if the $50,000 deposit to get on the list is any indication.
Tesla‘s options, however, aren’t particularly expensive. One-month implied volatility is at or about the 36th percentile; in other words, well below average despite the upcoming catalyst and despite October generally being a month of above-average volatility.
The Cybercab launch in early September underwhelmed the analyst community, with Wells Fargo in particular noting the robotaxi service faces “execution issues.” But the stock has since clawed its way back. Now, with the Roadster order book open again and one-month premiums near the low end of their range, the setup looks good for a breakout above the pre-Cybercab rollout levels, with defined risk if the Roadster launch similarly underwhelms investors.
The Roadster reveal is slated for Oct 1st at SpaceX’s McGregor test site in Texas. The ask is not small: a refundable $5,000 on a credit card, followed by a $45,000 wire within ten days, with the reservation not final until the wire clears. The book has also been opened in Canada and China. Tesla says the event will finally put pricing, specs, and production targets on the table.
Skeptics will point out, fairly, that the company took the same $50,000 deposits in 2017 and has missed a long string of delivery dates since. But the decision to reopen reservations two weeks before the reveal is a signal in itself. You don’t ask customers to wire fifty large for a car you’re about to embarrass yourself with on stage, or so one would hope. The Cybertruck rollout did prove at least a little embarrassing when the Chief Engineer broke the truck’s windows in a demonstration intended to show how unbreakable they were.
I also believe the Cybercab hangover is overdone. The Sept. 3 Cybercab launch in Austin apparently disappointed some, although I’m not sure what investors were hoping for. Perhaps they thought the city would be entirely transformed immediately and would look like a sci-fi movie straightaway, but given the regulatory hurdles and other issues, that was always an unrealistic expectation. Driverless ride-hailing will be part of how people move around, and the question that matters over the next several years isn’t whether Tesla’s first two-seater was ready for prime time on day one. It’s which companies can build autonomous vehicles by the hundreds of thousands (or millions), at a cost that makes the unit economics work, and put them on the road. Very few companies on earth have shown they can design, manufacture, and distribute complex consumer hardware at that scale. Tesla is one of them.
Rocky early innings seem to be par for the course for Tesla, after which it has shown it can do what few companies outside China can manage.
The fairest criticism of Tesla isn’t really about execution of novel automotive technologies (although they tend to run a bit over their ambitious deadlines). It’s valuation, a critique that’s fair if you measure Tesla conventionally against legacy automakers, or even against Uber or Lyft as a proxy for the robotaxi opportunity; the multiple is hard to defend on today’s earnings. Tesla trades at 213x forward earnings versus 22x for Uber and 7X for Ford.
But the market has never valued Tesla conventionally, and for good reason. This is a company, and a founder, that has repeatedly done what most said couldn’t be done and was ridiculous to try. Mass-market EVs at a profit, a charging network others now plug into, grid-scale storage, and, next door at SpaceX, reusable rockets. The more useful frame is a technology company with rare, hard-won skill in engineering and manufacturing complex consumer products. Through that lens, the premium looks less like froth and more like a price on optionality in autonomy, robotics, and energy that few others can credibly claim.
With a Semi event on Sept. 24, the Roadster reveal on Oct. 1, and third-quarter deliveries due right after, you might expect one-month options to be bid up, but they aren’t really. Thirty-day implied volatility sits around 41%, which is high in absolute terms for a megacap but near the bottom of Tesla’s own range over the past year. For a stock that routinely moves 5% on a headline, that’s a reasonable price to pay for upside exposure.
The trade
Rather than buy calls outright, I’d use a call spread to cut the premium outlay and the sensitivity to a volatility crush after the event. The October 30th 380/440 call spread covers the Roadster reveal, the delivery report, and the upcoming earnings.
Disclosures: Tidal owns/holds all the securities mentioned in the article.
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