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Tesla stock never stops taking heat for how expensive it is, but there is one company that might make it look like a value investor’s dream: Saudi Aramco.

That comes from ICAP Technical Analysis’ Walter Zimmermann, who made the case in a Sunday note. The first part of his argument, that Saudi Aramco (ticker: 2222.Saudi Arabia) is expensive, isn’t hard to make. A Bernstein survey suggested that Saudi Arabia’s national oil company was worth a touch more than $1.3 trillion, but it was worth some $1.7 trillion at its IPO, and even hit the $2-trillion market cap that Saudi Arabia had been seeking.

How big is that? Big enough that you could add the market-capitalizations of the next three biggest oil companies in the world— Exxon Mobil (XOM), Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.A), and Chevron (CVX)—throw in the next seven for good measure and still hit only around $1.4 trillion, Zimmermann explains. Aramco’s share price is so inflated, he says, that its dividend yield will be half that of Exxon and Shell.

“I cannot think of a single reason to be long Aramco up here. And I think I have a pretty good imagination,” Zimmermann writes. ”After all, the Aramco owners launched the IPO so they can run away (in fear) from the oil industry and invest elsewhere.”

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Now the hard part: arguing that Tesla is cheap. By most measures, it isn’t. Tesla stock (TSLA) trades at 2.8 times forward sales, to the S&P 500’s 2.3 times, and it isn’t expected to turn a profit so it doesn’t have a forward price/earnings ratio. But using the same methodology Zimmermann used on Saudi Aramco, Tesla doesn’t look nearly as overvalued. As of Dec. 13, Tesla had a market cap of $65 billion, well below that of Toyota Motor’s (TM) $250 billion and Volkswagen’s $100 or so billion, though it is worth more than General Motors (GM), which has a $51 billion market cap, and Ford Motor (F), which has a $37 billion cap. “Tesla is ‘only’ the third largest auto maker by market cap,” Zimmermann writes. “Aramco makes Tesla look dirt cheap.”

We might scoff at such an assertion—can’t they both be too expensive?—but Zimmermann apparently sees more potential upside for Tesla. He argues that if Tesla can break $410, then it could trade up to $550. With Tesla stock up 6.4% to $381.42 at 2:08 p.m. Monday, that implies a 44% gain.

“Tesla is clearly looking rather richly priced up here,” Zimmermann acknowledges. “But meanwhile, my best attempt at an Elliott wave analysis pegs the stock price as still headed higher.”

I doubt we can say the same thing about Saudi Aramco.

Write to Ben Levisohn at Ben.Levisohn@barrons.com