Key Takeaways
- Tesla and SpaceX could announce a merger as soon as December. Dan Ives puts the odds at 90% and says Tesla needs to be “north of 500.”
- Gary Black expects “little windfall” for Tesla holders, because the premium would arrive in SpaceX stock.
- Tesla holders would own about half the combined company, so they’d pay about half of any premium themselves.
- The best case for a deal is SpaceX’s growth, and anyone can buy SpaceX shares today.
Tesla (TSLA) and SpaceX (SPCX) are making progress in merger talks and could announce a deal as soon as December, Bloomberg reported on Nov. 12. It would be the largest merger ever.
Dan Ives of Yorkville Ives put the odds at 90% on CNBC’s Closing Bell that day, adding that Tesla needs to be “north of 500” for it to happen.
Gary Black, managing partner of The Future Fund, still expects an all-stock deal “will result in little windfall for TSLA investors given the massive dilution of SPCX shares and the long expected lead time (12-18 months) between deal announcement and deal close.”
The math backs him up.
Tesla Holders Would Pay Half Their Own Premium
SpaceX is worth about $1.9 trillion and Tesla about $1.55 trillion. Black’s own guess is a 20% to 25% premium. At 20%, Tesla holders would get SpaceX shares worth about $1.86 trillion, or about half the combined company.
So they’d fund about half the premium themselves. If the market values the combined company at the sum of its parts, a 20% premium is worth about 10% to Tesla holders, before synergies.
Twelve to 18 Months Is a Long Time
A stock premium is only worth what the acquirer’s shares fetch at closing. From SpaceX’s pre-deal price, a 17% drop would wipe out a 20% premium.
Marvell’s all-stock deal for Lumentum shows how fast that can happen, as Black pointed out. Marvell offered a 24% premium over Oct. 28 closes. By the Nov. 4 close, Marvell had fallen 36%, leaving the offer worth about $720 a share, 21% below Lumentum’s pre-deal price.
SpaceX hasn’t been steady either. It fell 12% from Oct. 21, the first trading day after Musk confirmed the talks, to Nov. 12, when it closed 31% below its June 16 record close. Walling off Tesla’s China business from SpaceX’s defense work could also slow things down.
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Tesla’s Price Already Holds a Lot of Hope
Analysts expect Tesla’s normalized EPS to recover from $1.66 in 2025 to $3.24 in 2028, only a little above the $3.12 it earned in 2023:
Yet it trades at 186x forward earnings, well above its three-year average of 138x:
That’s a lot of robotaxi and Optimus already in the price, and SpaceX’s special committee has little reason to pay a fat premium on top.
The Real Windfall Would Be SpaceX Itself
SpaceX’s revenue grew 80% from 2023 to 2025:
Third-quarter revenue then jumped 161% to $14.6 billion. If that holds, the SpaceX shares could be the windfall. But anyone can buy that today, with no wait and no vote, and it comes with costs: Goldman Sachs and Apollo are reportedly seeking buyers for pieces of a roughly $40 billion lease financing for SpaceX’s AI chips.
What Tesla Holders Should Expect
Black has it right. A deal hands Tesla holders a modest sweetener that a slide in SpaceX’s stock could erase, and turns a robotaxi bet into a SpaceX bet.
The exchange ratio is the number to watch, in December or 2027. The deal also needs a majority of all outstanding Tesla shares, so every share that doesn’t vote counts as a no.
So What is Tesla Stock Actually Worth if The Deal Doesn’t Go Through?
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Disclaimer:
Please note that the articles on TIKR are not intended to serve as investment or financial advice from TIKR or our content team, nor are they recommendations to buy or sell any stocks. We create our content based on TIKR Terminal’s investment data and analysts’ estimates. Our analysis might not include recent company news or important updates. TIKR has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading, and happy investing!
