More bad news for those shorting Tesla’s stock: The company’s shares shot up another 20 percent on Tuesday morning trading following a 19 percent surge on Monday, bringing its market value to a whopping $161 billion USD.
After one of its biggest single-day jump in months, Tesla’s stock jumped again in pre-market trading this morning to $900 USD a share as a massive short squeeze seems to be in full effect.
According to a new report from CNBC, Toyota is now the only carmaker in the world more valuable than Tesla, even though of the top 10 auto manufacturers, Tesla makes up only 2 percent of total revenues, according to Bespoke Investment Group.
“I just can’t believe this freaking stock. It’s insane,” Roth Capital analyst Craig Irwin said. “This is a big separation from those of us who like to pull out the calculators and look at reality.”
The rise followed positive developments related to Tesla’s battery suppliers and a pair of optimistic analyst forecasts.
On Monday, Panasonic said its joint battery venture with Tesla had turned a profit for the first time in the final quarter of 2019, according to Reuters, while a Chinese manufacturer of electric vehicle batteries, CATL, said it had signed a supplier agreement with Tesla, which recently started delivering vehicles built at its Shanghai factory.
On Saturday, Ark Invest, an investment research firm known for its extreme optimism for the carmaker, said Tesla’s stock could reach $7,000 USD per share in 2024, while another analyst, Bill Selesky of Argus Research, on Monday upgraded his year-end forecast for Tesla’s share price to $808 from $556.
“Despite past production delays, parts shortages, labor cost overruns and other difficulties, we expect Tesla to benefit from its dominant position in the electric vehicle industry and to improve performance in 2020 and beyond,” Mr. Selesky said in a note on Monday.
Tuesday’s advance gave Tesla a market capitalization of $161 billion USD, which makes it the biggest carmaker by market value behind Japan’s Toyota at about $227 billion. The company has an enterprise value of about $170 billion USD.
In recent weeks Tesla surpassed the combined market capitalization of Detroit’s Big Three — General Motors, Ford, and Fiat Chrysler — which have a combined value of $104 billion USD.
