Video: Gene Munster Compares Apples To Teslas

From Gene Munster’s perspective, Tesla Inc TSLA’s Model 3 is to transportation what Apple Inc. AAPL’s iPhone was to communication: disruptive.

“The iPhone not only issued an idea of a computer in your pocket but also fundamentally changed how we use the internet, and there’s been a ton of disruption around that whether you want to look at ride sharing or hotel booking or communications — Snapchat for example — so all the ways that we as humans interact has been changed because of that,” the managing partner of Loup Ventures told Benzinga. “I think there’s a similar parallel to what Tesla is doing around transportation and renewable energy.”

Munster expects to see a corresponding parallel in the firms’ profitability and draws hope from the Tesla-catalyzed pace of autonomous vehicle developments.

“I think they have a great play to really change mobility as we know it,” he said.

Tesla’s Turmoil

The Tesla permabull brushed off the recent layoffs and Model 3 production miss that led others to sell, noting that the latter was likely a fixable factor of complications in facility construction. He expects Tesla to expand in both personnel and assembly capabilities.

“I think this company is going to be a dramatically bigger company in the next four years,” he said, anticipating growth from 75,000 cars last year to 1.6 million in 2023. “I think there’s understandable concern that this is profitless prosperity, [but] we think it will be full of profit over the long term.”

Tesla’s SolarCity is believed to become an increasingly important contributor.

Apple’s Aptitude

Meanwhile, the paragon disruptor keeps on disrupting.

“I love the fact that Apple is going to be advancing in the wearable side,” Munster said. “That’s going to be at the detriment of their iPhone business, so this is going to be a handoff, but the fact that they’re willing to invest and accelerate that curve just shows you the maturity of their management team to be able to embrace change versus resistance.”

As with Tesla, Munster remained bullish on the stock in spite of widespread production concerns.

He considered Street discussion of a supplier’s order reduction largely incomplete, inattentive to Apple’s strategy of initially over-ordering, and urged skeptical interpretations — particularly as the guidance of one augmented reality component supplier recently suggested positive anticipated iPhone X demand.

Apple will begin to take preorders for the iPhone X Friday.

“I think this is going to be the whole story, the Apple story, over the next year,” Munster said, anticipating positive sales performance and “dramatic impact” on average selling price. “It’s about ASPs on the iPhone.”

Tesla will report earnings on Nov. 1 and Apple Nov. 2.

Check out our entire 30-minute talk with Munster in the video below.