During Tesla's third-quarter earnings call, CEO Elon Musk is re-upping previous claims that the company could at some point "far exceed Apple's current market cap."
Credit: Tesla
Tesla announced quarterly earnings after the bell on Wednesday. While Tesla didn't meet its revenue expectations for Q3 2022, it did beat its own earnings expectations.
After the , Musk announced that the company's board discussed a share buyback program of between $5 to $10 billion. However, the plan hasn't been finalized yet.
Musk also discussed Tesla's valuation -- which currently sits at $700 billion.
"A while ago," Musk said on Wednesday, "I said on an earnings call that I thought it was possible for Tesla to be worth more than Apple, which was worth $700 billion at the time."
A "while ago" refers to May 2017. Apple was worth $772 billion when the remark was made, and Tesla trailed at $51 billion. Apple is now valued at $2.3 trillion and is currently considered the most valuable company in the world.
"Now I'm of the opinion that we can far exceed Apple's current market cap," he continued. "I see a path for Tesla to be worth more than Apple and Saudi Aramco combined."
Saudi Aramco, a petroleum and natural gas company, has a current value of $2 trillion. In May, the company briefly surpassed Apple as the most valuable company in the world.
Tesla's stock is down more than 5% after Wednesday's earnings call. It started the year at $399.93 and is not presently at the year-low, but isn't far away from it, amidst a large tech stock contraction.
Musk has most recently been in the financial and tech news for his on-again, off-again Twitter deal. At present, it appears that the new terms of the deal may be completed soon -- but a chancery court deadline for the package is approaching.