Yahoo Finance Tesla market value passes $800bn for first time ever
Shares in Tesla (TSLA) closed more than 7% higher on Friday night, surging to yet another record high and pushing the company’s market value to over $800bn (£590bn) for the first time ever.
The electric carmarker has rallied more than 800% in the last year and 20% just this year alone, sending chief executive Elon Musk surging past Amazon’s (AMZN) Jeff Bezos to become the world’s richest man, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index.
Bezos’ net worth currently stands at about $186bn while Musk now worth $209bn. The SpaceX chief owns a 21% stake in Tesla which contributes around $175bn to his total net worth.
His growth in fortune over the past year marks the fastest rise to the top of the rich list in history. Musk’s net worth at the beginning of 2020 was around $27bn, placing him just inside the list of the world’s top 50 richest people.
Musk passed business tycoon Warren Buffett in July to become the seventh richest person. In November, Musk pipped Microsoft (MSFT) founder Bill Gates to become the second richest person.
This week Tesla’s market capitalisation also exceeded that of Facebook’s (FB) for the first time in history, making it the fifth-most-valuable company in the S&P 500 (^GSPC).
It is just behind Google parent Alphabet, which has a market value of $1.22tn.
Days ago, RBC raised its rating on Tesla stock to "sector perform" from "underperform."
RBC analyst Joseph Spak said in his research note that he previously underestimated Tesla's ability to use its soaring stock price to raise capital to fund the company's expansion.
"We took a fresh look at the growth opportunity, what we got wrong about TSLA's positioning and the valuation and conclude that the stock price itself is likely to be somewhat self-fulfilling to TSLA's growth and strategy," Spak said.
READ MORE: Elon Musk plans ‘world’s biggest battery factory’ at Tesla plant near Berlin
Although Tesla is now the largest auto manufacturer in the world, its production is only a fraction of some of its rivals’ sales such as General Motors (GM) and Toyota (TM).
Tesla deliveries for 2020 fell just shy of Musk’s personal target, but smashed through Wall Street estimates.
It delivered 499,550 vehicles last year, nearly 20,000 more than Wall Street estimates of 481,261, according to Refinitiv data reported by Reuters. Musk had set his sights on half a million.
Musk tweeted last week that he thought the company had just a 10% chance of “surviving it all” and that he was proud of his team for the near half a million in deliveries.
Watch: Elon Musk tops the list of world’s richest people
