People look at a Tesla Model Y car at a Tesla showroom in Beijing on January 5, 2021.
Wang Zhao | AFP | Getty images
Tesla shares rallied more than 7% in premarket trading Monday as investors encouraged production and delivery numbers that far exceeded expectations.
At around 6:40 a.m. Monday, the company’s stock rose 7.44% in premarket trading at $ 711.
Tesla reported Friday that it delivered 184,800 vehicles and produced 180,338 cars in the first quarter of 2021. Analysts expected the company to deliver approximately 168,000 vehicles during this period, according to FactSet estimates on April 1.
It was a record quarter, exceeding 180,570 deliveries the company recorded in the fourth quarter of last year.
In a note on Sunday, Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives upgraded Tesla to “outperform” and raised his target price for the company from $ 950 to $ 1,000 over 12 months.
“In our view, the 1Q delivery figures released on Friday were a paradigm changer and shows that pent-up global demand for Tesla’s Model 3 / Y is entering its next phase of growth as part of a global green tidal wave underway,” Ives wrote. in the note. “We now think Tesla could achieve more than 850,000 deliveries for the year with a target of 900,000, despite the shortage of chips and various supply chain issues in the automotive industry.”
Meanwhile, in February, a filing revealed that Tesla sales in China more than doubled last year amid the coronavirus pandemic. The electric vehicle manufacturer’s sales in China were $ 6.66 billion, about one-fifth of the company’s $ 31.54 billion in revenues.
Despite a top 2020, it has been a difficult year for Tesla so far, with stocks falling more than 9% in 2021.
—CNBC’s Lora Kolodny contributed to this report.