⛽️ Tesla's Surges on Supercharger Adoption

This week, Tesla's streak of 13 consecutive days of gains finally came to a close on Wednesday.

During this rally, Tesla’s market cap soared by over $200 billion, more than the entire value of Toyota, the world’s second-most valuable automaker.

According to S3 Partners, short sellers lost over $7 billion during the rally, further compounding their year-to-date losses, which now amount to nearly $12.7 billion. This comes after news that Tesla’s Model Y became the best-selling car model in Q1 2023.

Despite falling Wednesday and Thursday, on Friday Tesla hopped right back on the gain train and recovered almost all of the previous days losses.

The rally was sparked by Tesla's North American Charging Standard (NACS) emerging as a potential universal standard. Notably, General Motors and Ford, the second and third-largest EV sellers in the U.S., joined the standard by partnering with Tesla last week.

Following these announcements, several key players in the industry announced interest in NACS this week:

1. Blink Charging is the final stages of designing a new direct current (DC) fast charger that offers both NACS and CCS connectors.

2. Tritium plans to add the NACS connector to its chargers in the United States and in other markets that decide to adopt it.

3. EVgo, which already offered Tesla connectors in 2020, said it will be expanding its NACS connectors to its fast charging network across the United States.

4. ChargePoint stated that it will offer an NACS connector option for its products and will provide upgrades for chargers that are already in service.

5. Mercedes-Benz and Stellantis, the parent company of Chrysler and Dodge, are also reportedly evaluating the NACS connector.

Piper Sandler estimates that Tesla could generate $3 billion in charging revenue from non-Tesla owners by 2030, with a potential increase to $5.4 billion by 2032. While significant, this is only a fraction of Tesla’s revenue from its own car sales which totaled $81 billion in 2022.

The greater benefit here is control, with the NACS port expected to dominate 60% of the U.S. EV market.

🎟️ Get your ticket for the Calgary Blossom Meet-up!

It’s official - Blossom is coming to Calgary on Monday, July 17th along with Brandon and Marc Beavis, Canadian in a T-shirt, and Zac Hartley!

Our Vancouver event was an absolute blast and sold out quick so if you plan to attend make sure to get your ticket now. If you live in Toronto or Montreal stay tuned, we’ll have tickets live next week!

We’re proud to have Hamilton ETFs as our presenting sponsor and BMO ETFs, Horizons ETFs, and Passiv as Gold Sponsors.

🍿 Netflix Is Putting On a Show

This week, Netflix continued its impressive run, with shares rising ~5% at the start of the week after a series of positive analyst upgrades.

Pivotal Research, UBS Group, Oppenheimer, Credit Suisse Group, Piper Sandler, and Wells Fargo & Company all raised their price targets on the stock, with Pivotal Research setting the highest mark at $535 (Netflix has a current share price of $431).

The surge in Netflix shares can be largely attributed to its recent crackdown on password sharing, which led to a significant increase in US sign-ups. The crackdown, which was rolled out in over 100 countries, ensures only one account is used per household.

The move resulted in nearly 100,000 daily sign-ups on May 26 and May 27, marking the biggest single days for US sign-ups since 2019. Analysts remain optimistic about this initiative, with JPMorgan estimating that Netflix will be able to monetize 14 to 33 million of the roughly 100 million users sharing passwords by the end of 2025.

While this has led to an increase in revenue, it is a very unpopular decision among consumers with many calling it hypocritical for a company that has for years ignored or even encouraged password sharing. Time will tell the extent that this outrage will cause churn, but analysts expect it to be small and temporary.

“In every market, there’s an initial outrage,” says Rich Greenfield, media analyst at LightShed Partners. “Then they put out a piece of content people can’t live without, and two months later their numbers are up.”

🏦 The Bank of Canada Raised Interest Rates, the Fed holds steady

In the last two weeks, more interest rate news hit the press with the Bank of Canada increasing interest rates to 4.75% on June 7 and the Federal Reserve deciding to hold its benchmark rate steady at 5-5.25% on June 14.

Both decisions mark a shift in tone. In Canada, the central bank had signaled in January that it would conditionally pause its aggressive rate hikes. In US, the Fed had previously implemented 10 consecutive rate hikes.

While the rate pause in the US is a welcome relief for investors, we’re not in the clear yet, with the Fed emphasizing that additional rate hikes are possible if necessary to bring prices under control.

Interest rates are the central banks’ strongest tool to combat inflation, as increasing rates slow the economy by increasing the cost to borrow and causing a cutback in spending. For investors, this is usually bad news as it means companies have to deal with the burden of higher interest payments, and bonds become relatively more attractive to stocks.

🎙 Top Discussions This Week

🗞️ What else you might’ve missed:

• Intel ($INTC) is close to an agreement with the German government for $10.8B.

• Toyota ($TM) revealed is working on its first electric GR sports car.

• Advanced Micro Devices ($AMD) stock pops on potential Amazon cloud partnership.

• Microsoft ($MSFT) was reportedly warned by OpenAI about Bing's chatbot.

• U.S. CPI for May came in at 4% year-over-year, below expectations.

• JPMorgan ($JPM) agreed to pay $290M to settle a lawsuit involving Jeffrey Epstein.