Most of Apple's profits -- as of a few years ago -- came from iPhone sales. I'm pretty sure this is still true. In ~2015, the iPhone had a 63% margin.
It looks like the company as a whole averages a ~40% gross margin [1]. Tesla's appears to be closer to ~15%, with many highly negative quarters [2].
Of course, net income to revenue is probably more important to look at in this case. Apple's is consistently above ~20%. Tesla's has mostly been negative, and the highest it's ever been is around ~2%.
Tesla would need to sell roughly 10 times as many cars at the same margin to meet Toyota/Volkswagen/GM valuations. If Tesla were based on it's current financials, it would be valued at $5-$10Bn. It wouldn't be valued at $100Bn now if people thought it could be reasonably valued at $100Bn in the future. People must think it could reasonably be valued at $1T in 10 years.
For that to be true, Tesla would need to be selling 200% of cars on the planet. A lot of people think car sales have peaked. It's possible in 10 years there will be less cars sold. It's highly improbable there will be twice as many cars sold, and that all of them will belong to Tesla.
I don’t follow. Why must people think that Tesla will be worth 10 times its current value? The pro-Tesla argument I’ve typically seen is that they’ve already demonstrated they’re better than other manufacturers and it’s just a matter of cleaning up their production pipeline. Have you seen anyone in particular argue that Tesla will be valued at $1T in 2030?
The gross margin for hardware is calculated as revenue minus COGS - literally the parts, assembly, packaging, and distribution. Software is considered an R&D expense.
A 30% COGS is a benchmark for most hardware products and how much you can invest in software depends on how expensive your product is and how many you sell. Since Apple sells a lot at a premium price point, they've got a lot more room in their budget for software R&D. Capital equipment like cars, machinery, power plants, etc are a whole different beast however.
Yeah, Apple has targetted 40% for a long time and tends to stay pretty close to it. Tesla has often said that their target is 25%, but they've rarely been able to hit it.
OTOH, if they were able to get margins back to 25%, these valuations would start to look a lot less crazy.
