Investors should still buy Tesla's (NASDAQ: TSLA) stock in spite of all the "drama" surrounding the electric car maker and its management, an analyst at Baird said after touring the company's factory.
"We recently toured the Fremont factory and came away incrementally positive" about the company, analyst Ben Kallo wrote in Monday
"Gigafactory 1 creates a significant barrier for competition and manufacturing capability should be a competitive advantage for TSLA over the long term. We believe TSLA's Gigafactory enables the company to drive down costs through an industrialization of battery pack assembly and economies of scale."
Kallo also reiterated his buy rating and stuck with his $411 price target, an implied upside of 56.1% from Friday's close of $263.24.
Tesla shares have been under pressure lately amid key departures from the company's management team, as well as CEO Elon Musk's erratic behavior. Tesla is down more than 25% over the past month and has dropped 15.5% this year.
On Friday, Tesla announced Chief Accounting Officer Dave Morton had resigned. Morton — who had accepted the job less than a month earlier — said in a statement he left Tesla because of "the level of public attention placed on the company."
Separately, Bloomberg News reported on Friday the company's head of human resources, Gaby Toledano, is also leaving the company. These two departures pushed Tesla's stock down more than 6% on Friday.
Tesla stock jumped first thing Monday by $10.21, or 3.9%, to $273.44
