(Marketwatch) Billionaire investor Ron Baron has been pumping Tesla for years now, and who can really argue with him at this point?
The stock is up more than 400% this year, and if Baron’s prediction for sales growth of 50% annually comes to fruition, there’s certainly more upside from here.
With $39.9 billion in assets, his Baron Capital firm owned more than 7.3 million Tesla shares, at an average cost of just $43.07 a share, as of Sept. 30. The stock is currently trading at $458 with a market cap of $417 billion. So, it’s been a 10-bagger for Baron.
“I’ve said for a long time, I thought it was going to be $1 [trillion] to $2 trillion, he told CNBC in an interview on Wednesday. “With what developments have taken place recently, I think $2 trillion is the right number. So I think it’s five times from here.”
Baron, however, also said that he ultimately wants to be known as “not just the Tesla guy, but also the SpaceX guy.” Baron Capital now holds more than 800,000 shares of Elon Musk’s other company, which is currently private.
“SpaceX, I think, has a chance to be just as large as Tesla,” Baron told CNBC. “In the next couple years I’m going to be talking to you a lot more about SpaceX than I’m going to be able to do right now.”
Baron Capital first bought shares of SpaceX in 2017 and purchased $26 million worth of the stock during the company’s recent $2.1 billion fundraise.
Baron said SpaceX’s valuation comes to about $44 billion.
