Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX and chief executive officer of Tesla Inc., will arrive at the Axel Springer Award ceremony in Berlin, Germany on Tuesday, December 1, 2020.
Liesa Johannssen-Koppitz | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla outpaced Facebook by market cap after markets opened Friday.
Tesla’s stock rose about 5.5% at 9:03 a.m. ET to give it a market cap of $ 802.6 billion, while Facebook’s share fell. Facebook now has a market cap of approximately $ 755.8 billion.
The jump makes Elon Musk’s auto company the fifth largest company in the large-cap benchmark when Alphabet’s stock classes are added together. It now just follows Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Alphabet.
While the mark is largely symbolic, it indicates Tesla’s dramatic rise in just a short period of time. Tesla became the first US $ 100 billion publicly traded car maker in January 2019. Just 10 months later, the company exceeded a market cap of $ 500 billion. The share gained more than 700% in 2020.
The company joined the S&P 500 in December, ending a strong year of performance. Under Musk’s leadership, Tesla has delivered five consecutive profitable quarters. Tesla delivered 499,550 vehicles in the year and is currently building new plants in Austin, Texas and Brandenburg, Germany, among other efforts to increase its production and sales volume.
Meanwhile, Facebook stock gained about 32% in 2020.
Tesla shares soared this week following a very optimistic comment from Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas and news of a Democratic Senate majority following Georgia’s second election.
President Elect Joe Biden’s goals include creating 1 million new jobs in the domestic auto industry, expanding electric vehicle charging infrastructure in the US, and ramping up solar and other renewables as part of his plan for clean energy. It would seemingly prove easier for him to advance these plans with a democratic majority in the senate. The Democrats sealed their majority in the Senate this week after the second races in Georgia.
The rise in Tesla’s stock price on Thursday pushed Musk past Jeff Bezos, who has been the richest person since 2017 and is currently worth about $ 184 billion. Musk started 2020 with a value of about $ 27 billion and was barely in the top 50 richest people.
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