Tesla Inc chief executive officer Elon Musk poked fun at short sellers as his electric automaker’s stock surged to a record high, vaulting its market value past its century-old rival Ford Motor Co.
“Stormy weather in Shortville...” he tweeted on Monday, as Tesla shares climbed 5.7 percent.
The maker of Model S sedans and Model X crossovers saw its market capitalization surge to about US$47.8 billion, US$2.6 billion more than Ford.
Tesla has long been a popular target by short sellers, including Jim Chanos, who famously bet early on energy company Enron Corp’s failure and was proven right.
Tesla surpassed Ford after reporting worldwide shipments of 25,000 cars and SUVs in the first quarter, exceeding analysts’ estimates.
While Ford delivered about nine times as many vehicles in just the US last month, its sales missed projections and its shares fell.
“I don’t know if people want electric cars, but people want Tesla,” Robert W. Baird & Co analyst Ben Kallo said by telephone. “I’m not an Elon Musk worshiper, but people that would normally buy a Porsche are buying Teslas right now.”
Short interest in Tesla has risen to 29 percent of its free float from a 52-week low of 20 percent in mid-October last year, according to Markit data.
The company delivered less than 80,000 vehicles globally last year, compared with 6.7 million for Ford, the second-biggest automaker in the US behind General Motors Co.
Ford, which reported net income over the past five years totaling US$26 billion, towers over Tesla on most metrics. Tesla lost US$2.3 billion during the same five-year span. Revenue was US$151.8 billion last year for Ford, compared with Tesla’s US$7 billion.
“It’s mind-boggling that a company that has the global breadth and depth that Ford has is suddenly valued at less than or equal to Tesla,” AutoPacific Inc analyst and researcher Dave Sullivan said. “It does not compute.”
Tesla sold about 40,697 vehicles in the US last year, according to an estimate by researcher IHS Markit. Ford delivers that many F-Series trucks about every three weeks.
Investors are betting Musk can deliver on ambitious growth targets pegged to the mass-market Model 3 to roll out later this year, which is to retail for about US$35,000.
Musk has predicted that with the new, more affordable sedan in the lineup, the company’s annual production could soar to 500,000 by next year.
“Tesla is valued like a company that has millions in unit sales, which it doesn’t. It took Ford 100 years to get to that point,” Bloomberg Intelligence auto analyst Kevin Tynan said. “Is there ever a future where Tesla sells 6 million units globally? Is there a future where Tesla earns money like Ford does?”
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day