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GP: Elon Musk, President and CEO of Tesla Inc., will speak at an event at the company's manufacturing plant site in Shanghai, China on Monday, Jan. 7. 2019.
Qilai Shen | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Craig Irwin, an analyst at Roth Capital Partners, told CNBC Tuesday that the electric car group could have sold to Apple six years ago at a price much higher than the stock.
"Around 2013, Apple launched a serious offer at around $ 240 per share," Irwin said in an interview with CNBC's Squawk channel. "It's something we checked on several times. I am quite sure that's right. Apple has made an offer for Tesla. I do not know if it has come to an administrative formality, but I know from multiple sources that it was very credible. "
Apple and Tesla have not responded to requests for comment.
Tesla is down more than 38% in 2019, reaching a stock price of $ 197.76 at the start of trading Tuesday. The stock plunged 46% from its peak in August, when CEO Elon Musk said he had "secured funding" to sell the company at $ 420 per share.
Knowing that there was a "very credible" offer on the table in 2013 prevents Irwin from being more bearish on the stock today.
"If Apple had interests at that time, they would probably now have the right price," he said.
Irwin said that the Apple car project was continuing to grow in secrecy and that the company was building large "dry rooms" in California to do something in the field of automotive batteries. According to Irwin, these rooms are designed to handle the environmental containment required for the production of lithium ion batteries.
"I'm verifying that Apple is building several dry rooms, including a much larger couple than you would need for developing watch batteries or consumer products," wrote Irwin in a follow-up email.
Irwin is not the first to suggest that Apple and Tesla have had discussions. The San Francisco Chronicle revealed in 2014 that Musk had also met with Apple's head of mergers and acquisitions, as well as presumably CEO Tim Cook.
If the two companies banded together, it would be by far the largest acquisition ever made by Apple and one of the most important in the history of the technology sector. Tesla's current market capitalization is approximately $ 36 billion. The highest amount paid by Apple for Beats Electronics in 2014 is $ 3 billion.
For an agreement to be reached, Apple would be faced with the question of what to do with Frank Musk and its tendency to attract attention for many bad reasons, that it 's all about. act to tweet important non-public information or to smoke grass on a podcast.
"In regards to the acquisition: I understood that Apple wanted Elon Musk to retire, and it was a market killer," Irwin said in the email.
WATCH: Elon Musk saw smoking grass on podcast
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