Tesla – and Musk – on a record $tox roll
Tesla shares topped $2,000 Thursday, continuing a remarkable run that has seen them skyrocket more than 360 percent this year.
The electric automaker’s stock rallied more than 6 percent in intraday trading and closed the day at $2001.83, bringing the company’s gains to just under 19 percent for the week.
Tesla’s market cap now sits at $372 billion, making it the most valuable carmaker in the world by far. The rally added an additional $4.2 billion to the net worth of Chief Executive Elon Musk and brings his fortune to $89.5 billion, according to Forbes.
Musk has added $62.4 billion to his net worth since the beginning of the year thanks to Tesla’s supercharged stock performance.
Tesla earlier this month announced a 5-for-1 stock split, which will go into effect next Friday in an effort by the Palo Alto, Calif., company “to make stock ownership more accessible to employees and investors.”
At $2,000 per share, the stock split would make each new share of Tesla worth $400, among the highest-priced, per share, on
Wall Street. Shares were worth $430 to start the year.
However, with Robinhood and other brokerages increasingly letting customers buy fractions of individual shares, the benefit of stock splits has become less obvious, making Tesla’s rally following the announcement of its stock split surprising to some professional investors.
Tesla’s stock is currently priced at an exceedingly high 148 times expected earnings, according to Refinitiv, and that valuation will not be affected by the split.
Tesla will start rolling out “made-inChina” Model Y vehicles at its factory in Shanghai starting in 2021, the Global Times tweeted on Thursday, citing an unnamed executive.
Investors expect important announcements when Tesla holds its long-awaited Battery Day on Sept. 22, the same day as its annual shareholder meeting.
The company is expected to present battery innovations, with analysts at Morgan Stanley predicting a company announcement on supplying “superior” battery packs to the auto industry.