Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX and CEO of Tesla Inc., arrives at the Axel Springer Award ceremony in Berlin, Germany, on Tuesday, December 1, 2020.
Liesa Johannssen-Koppitz | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Electric vehicle maker Tesla overtook Facebook by market capitalization after markets opened on Friday.
Tesla’s shares jumped about 5.5% at 9:03 am Eastern time, to give it a market capitalization of $ 802.6 billion, while Facebook’s shares fell. Facebook now has a market capitalization of around $ 755.8 billion.
The leap makes Elon Musk’s automotive venture the fifth largest company in the large-cap benchmark when counting Alphabet’s share classes together. Now it is only behind Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Alphabet.
Although the brand is largely symbolic, it signifies Tesla’s dramatic rise in a short period of time. Tesla became the first publicly listed American car manufacturer worth $ 100 billion in January 2019. Just 10 months later, the company exceeded the market value of $ 500 billion. The stock gained more than 700% in 2020.
The company joined the S&P 500 in December, ending a year of strong performance. Led by Musk, Tesla has had 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’s shares gained about 32% over 2020.
Tesla’s shares rose this week after a very optimistic note from Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas, and news of a Democratic majority in the Senate after the second round of the Georgia election.
Among other things, President-elect Joe Biden aims to create 1 million new jobs in the national auto industry, expand the charging infrastructure for electric vehicles in the U.S. and increase solar and other renewable energy here as part of his plan of clean energy. Apparently, it would be easier for him to promote those plans with a Democratic majority in the Senate. Democrats sealed their majority in the Senate this week, after the runoff runs in Georgia.
Thursday’s increase in Tesla’s stock price pushed Musk past Jeff Bezos, who was 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 among the 50 richest people.
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