The automaker Tesla, boosted on Wall Street by a mega-order of 100,000 electric vehicles from the rental company Hertz, for the first time Monday reached a capitalization of more than 1000 billion dollars.
Investors disregarded a new alert issued by the US transportation safety office, the NTSB, which on Monday blamed the group for ignoring its recommendations on its transportation assistance system. conduct.
Elon Musk’s group stock closed at US $ 1,024.86, up US $ 115.18 or 12.7%. By exceeding the symbolic threshold of 1000 billion dollars, the company joins Apple, Microsoft, Google and Amazon in the club of the richest companies on the stock market.
This outbreak also consolidates the position of the richest man in the world for Elon Musk, who, according to the firm Factset, has about 17% of the shares of the company.
The stock had already climbed after the release of earnings last week for the automaker, which again saw record third-quarter sales and profits, despite supply issues and semiconductor shortages affecting the entire market. automotive industry. It took off again Monday after the announcement of an order for 100,000 vehicles by the end of 2022 by Hertz.
For the boss of the car rental company, Mark Fields, the latter “have become consumer products”. Hertz is betting heavily on this new strategy, even hiring American football star Tom Brady to promote it. With the Tesla, electric cars should represent more than 20% of its fleet.
“An order of this magnitude […] highlights the gradual adoption of electric vehicles in the United States, ”notes analyst Dan Ives of Wedbush. “Tesla is leading the way, but other manufacturers, like Lucid Motors, GM, Ford or Faraday Future, are in a hurry to grab shares of a market that could be worth $ 5 trillion in the next decade”, underlines the analyst.
Elon Musk’s group is keeping one step ahead for now. Not only is the growth of its turnover in a difficult context for the automotive sector “extraordinary”, say analysts at Morgan Stanley, but the company is also one of the most profitable in the sector.
Driving assistance
Tesla will also be able to rely more and more on ancillary activities, such as its network of charging stations, its automobile insurance or its autonomous driving software, add analysts from Morgan Stanley.
On this last point, regulators do not always look favorably on the group’s progress, like the letter sent Monday by the NTSB to Elon Musk. The agency, which says it is “very worried”, criticizes him for never having explained how he intended to implement the recommendations made after an accident in 2016, even though he is currently experimenting with new functionalities in real conditions.
In addition to the Autopilot system already offered on its cars, Tesla has been testing since early October a new version of its driving assistance system, nicknamed Full Self Driving Beta (or FSD Beta), with a group of drivers selected by him, without having previously referred them to the competent authorities.