Tesla Inc is off to a strong start to the new year after the electric-car maker smashed its quarterly record for deliveries in what one analyst called a “trophy-case” performance.
The company’s shares jumped 14% in New York, their biggest gain since March and best start to a year since Tesla went public more than a decade ago. The US$144 billion in market value that Tesla added on Monday is the equivalent of an entire Honeywell International Inc. or Starbucks Corp. It’s also more than the value of almost 90% of the companies in the S&P 500 Index.
Worldwide deliveries totalled 308,600 vehicles in the fourth quarter, well ahead of the average analyst estimate of roughly 263,000 vehicles, and topping the company’s previous record of 241,300 from the prior quarter. Annual handovers surged to more than 936,000 in 2021, up 87% from the previous year’s level, Austin, Texas-based Tesla said Sunday.
