Elon Musk expects Tesla's market capitalisation to far exceed Apple's current m-cap. In a conference call following the electric vehicle maker's quarterly results, Musk said he sees a potential path for Tesla to be worth more than Apple and Saudi Aramco combined.
The Tesla chief executive said that on an earnings call several years ago he'd stated that he thought it was possible for Tesla to be worth more than Apple, which was then the highest market cap company.
At the time, Apple was worth around $700 billion. Today, Tesla is worth almost $700 billion based on the company's market capitalisation.
"It required incredible execution, at least some luck, and we did indeed achieve that. Tesla went, in fact, or passed Apple's market cap at the time," said Musk.
Apple, the world's largest private company in terms of market capitalisation, is currently valued at $2.3 trillion while oil producer Saudi Aramco has a market cap of $2.1 trillion.
Musk further said he expects Tesla to be roughly twice the value of Saudi Aramco. "That doesn't mean it will happen or that will be easy. In fact, I think it will be very difficult. It will require a lot of work, some very creative new products, manage expansion and always the luck," said the Tesla CEO.
On fears of a global recession, Musk said Tesla will not reduce its production in a meaningful way.
While talking about the acquisition of microblogging platform Twitter, Musk said he and other investors are "obviously overpaying for Twitter" right now but the long-term potential for Twitter is, in order of magnitude, greater than its current value.
"I am excited about the Twitter situation because obviously another part incredibly well. And I think it's massive that this sort of languished for a long time, but has an incredible potential," said Musk.
The world's richest person had first proposed to buy out Twitter in April. Musk later tried to back out of the deal, citing Twitter's inability to provide data on spam or fake accounts on its platform.
Twitter then sued Musk in the U.S. Delaware Court of Chancery, accusing him of "knowingly" breaching the $44-billion deal. In August, Musk sold 7.92 million Tesla shares worth $6.9 billion to avoid an emergency sale in case he was forced to close the Twitter deal and some of his equity partners don't come along.
However, Musk again proposed to buy Twitter for $54.20 per share earlier this month, reversing his stand on abandoning the deal due to spam accounts and likely avoiding a contentious courtroom battle.
