Crunching Tesla's Forward Multiple   When a company's not making
a profit, all the earnings multiples you could otherwise use to
measure its performance become invalid. Tesla Motors (NASDAQ:
TSLA) is one such case. But if it were making a profit, at what
multiple would Tesla trade?  Understanding Tesla’s nature  In my
previous post, I called Tesla "the Apple of auto industry." Just
like Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) is considered unique in its sphere,
Tesla is also unique in many respects. I have already written a
detailed thesis on Apple and shown how its different segments
compete with different companies.  Had Tesla been a run-of-the-
mill car manufacturer, our job of assigning a valuation multiple
would have become much easier. That would have meant a
straightaway forward P/E multiple of 9. I have reached that by
averaging Ford’s (NYSE: F) and General Motor’s (NYSE: GM)
forward multiple of 10 and 8, respectively. (In this article,
wherever I use a forward multiple, it will be for the year
2014).  Therefore, we will