Investor Ron Baron has been considered one of Tesla’s largest shareholders for years, and he has no plans to alter that.

Baron advised CNBC on Thursday that he thinks the electrical car large’s high-flying inventory has far more room to run – and that he plans to proceed holding the corporate’s inventory for not less than eight extra years.

“I feel we will make three, 4, 5 occasions our cash on Tesla from right here,” Baron mentioned on CNBC’s “Squawk Field.” “I feel for Tesla that is the very starting of what they’re doing.”

Baron’s namesake agency, Baron Capital, invested about $380 million in Tesla between 2014 and 2016 at a mean value of simply over $50 per share . It now has about 12.8% of its whole belongings beneath administration invested in Tesla, or about $6.2 billion, following the EV maker’s stratospheric run-up over the previous couple of years.

However Baron is nowhere close to able to money out. Requested if he expects to be holding Tesla inventory in eight to 10 years, Baron mentioned sure – despite the fact that, as he famous, his agency offered a few billion {dollars}’ value of Tesla inventory in a bid to cut back buyers’ danger and may trim its place once more sooner or later.

“I used to be getting extensively criticized for having such a big proportion of my [firm’s] belongings in a single inventory, and other people mentioned how are you going to be so loopy,” Baron mentioned, explaining the choice to trim the agency’s Tesla stake. “I needed them to assume I wasn’t loopy.”

Baron advised CNBC that buyers ought to look previous near-term velocity bumps like the corporate’s current miss on deliveries. Tesla delivered about 310,000 autos within the first quarter, falling about 7,000 autos in need of Wall Avenue’s consensus estimate.

“Individuals mentioned they need to have achieved 317,000 vehicles within the quarter,” Baron mentioned. “In 4 years they’re going to do one million vehicles 1 / 4, and if you happen to go 10 years out it is one thing like 5 million vehicles 1 / 4.”

At 5 million autos 1 / 4, or 20 million per 12 months, Tesla’s automotive enterprise could be roughly the scale of Toyota and Volkswagen – at present the world’s two largest automakers – mixed.

Baron stays an ardent fan of Tesla CEO Elon Musk and mentioned that he is not fearful that Musk’s current determination to spend money on Twitter will change into a distraction. Musk additionally joined the social media firm’s board.

“I simply assume this [investment in Twitter] helps his advertising,” Baron mentioned. “There is not any method he is taking his eye off the ball or something.”

Shares of Tesla have been successfully flat in premarket buying and selling Thursday.