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Tesla Inc. just grew by more than $140 billion.
The elective vehicle industry leader’s stock
TSLA,
powered up $143 a share, or 13.5%, to $1,199.78 Monday to their highest close since Nov. 5. The rally comes after Tesla announced over the weekend record fourth-quarter deliveries that blew past Wall Street expectations.
Based on 1.004 billion shares outstanding as of Oct. 21, the stock’s price gain, the biggest since the company went public in June 2010, added about $144 billion to Tesla’s market capitalization, to $1.205 trillion. That’s just below the record of $1.235 trillion seen when the stock closed $1,229.91 on Nov. 4.
Tesla has solidified its place as the fifth-most-valuable U.S. company, behind fourth-place Amazon.com Inc.
AMZN,
at $1.729 trillion and ahead of Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc.
FB,
at $943.17 billion. Tesla has a long way to go to catch leader Apple Inc.
AAPL,
at $2.986 trillion.
The stock’s rally has nearly erased all the losses it suffered since Chief Executive Elon Musk started selling more than $16 billion worth of shares to help pay his tax bill.
After closing at $1,222.09 on Nov. 5, Musk started selling stock on Nov. 8, and he’s sold 15.7 million shares so far through Dec. 28. The weighted average price of his share sales over that time was approximately $1,046.25, based on a MarketWatch analysis of Securities and Exchange Commission filings.
In the last filing detailing Musk’s stock sales, the company disclosed he now owned 177,032,165 Tesla shares, which at current prices would be valued at $207.27 billion.
Tesla’s stock rally on Monday comes after it had lost 7.7% in December, to snap a six-month win streak in which it rocketed 83.1%. It has now climbed 68.8% over the past 12 months, while the S&P 500 index
SPX,
has advanced 27.6%.
Deutsche Bank analyst Emmanuel Rosner reiterated his buy rating and raised his price target on Tesla shares to $1,200 from $1,000, saying “impressive” deliveries data suggest “large upside to 2022.”
Rosner wasn’t alone, as at least eight of the 41 analysts surveyed by FactSet raised their targets after the deliveries data. But not all were quite as bullish as Rosner.
J.P. Morgan’s Ryan Brinkman, who has been bearish on the stock for at least the past three years, raised his target by 18%, but only to $295 from $250, as the deliveries data “easily” exceeded his forecast.
The new target is still 75% below current levels.
“While our higher price target continues to imply large downside, we continue to believe it is not ungenerous, including that it values Tesla as the world’s most valuable automaker,” edging out Toyota Motor Corp.
TM,
even though Toyota is the world’s largest automaker by unit volume and Tesla ranks 20th.
