People look at a Tesla Model Y car in a Tesla showroom in Beijing on January 5, 2021.
Wang Zhao | AFP | Getty Images
Tesla’s shares rose more than 7% in pre-market trading on Monday, with investors applauding production and delivery numbers that exceeded expectations.
At around 6:40 am on Monday, the company’s stock rose 7.44% in the pre-market to $ 711.
Tesla reported on Friday that it delivered 184,800 vehicles and produced 180,338 cars in the first quarter of 2021. Analysts had expected the company to deliver around 168,000 vehicles during this period, according to estimates compiled by FactSet on April 1.
It was a record quarter, exceeding the 180,570 deliveries the company recorded in the fourth quarter of last year.
In a note on Sunday, Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives updated Tesla to “superior performance” and raised its 12-month target price for the company from $ 950 to $ 1,000.
“In our opinion, the 1Q delivery numbers released on Friday were a paradigm shift and show that globally pent-up demand for Tesla’s Model 3 / Y is reaching its next growth stage as part of a global green tidal wave in “Ives wrote in the note. “We now believe that Tesla could exceed 850,000 deliveries for the year, with 900,000 an expansion target, despite the chip shortage and several persistent supply chain problems across the automotive sector.”
Meanwhile, in February, a lawsuit showed that Tesla’s sales in China more than doubled last year amid the coronavirus pandemic. Sales of the electric car maker in China reached $ 6.66 billion – about a fifth of the company’s $ 31.54 billion revenue.
Despite a strong 2020, it has been a tough year for Tesla so far, with shares falling more than 9% in 2021.
—Lora Kolodny from CNBC contributed to this report.