Tesla's stock prices continued to rally this week, reaching record-breaking levels that managed to prove naysayers wrong. The continued surge in the stock was partly fueled by bullish forecasts from analysts, which predicted a new period of the electric firm in its European and Chinese markets.
After hitting the $420 mark earlier in the week, the stock further surged upwards, breaking $430 per share for the first time since it was listed. The initial surge to $420 led the company's CEO Elon Musk to post a cannabis-linked joke on Twitter, stating how "high" the stock had become. Musk was referencing the number "420," which references the use of marijuana.
The particular number was also previously mentioned by Musk in 2018 when he claimed that he had secured an investor to take the company private. That now-infamous tweet had landed Musk in trouble with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which accused Musk of misleading investors.
On Thursday, Tesla's stocks closed 1.3 percent higher to $430.94 per share. Apart from the positive forecasts, the stock was also raised by Tesla's recently closed agreement with a group of Chinese banks to loan the company $1.4 billion. The loan will partly be used to roll over Tesla's existing debts, while the rest will be used towards further developing the company's Shanghai Gigafactory.
Over the past three months, Tesla's stock has increased by more than 77 percent. The surge was instigated by the release of its better-than-expected third-quarter earnings report in October.
Hype in the company's stocks was further exacerbated by revelations of its plans to further penetrate China, which is currently the world's largest car market. The company also received added publicity and investor attention when it unveiled its new fully-electric Cybertruck pickup truck. Musk had previously boasted that the company has so far received more than 250,000 pre-orders for the vehicle.
With prices continually climbing, market analyst Daniel Ives increased stock price targets for Tesla from $100 to $370 on Thursday. The upgrade was based on factors pointing to an upward trajectory for the company's profitability and demand for its products such as the Model 3.
Ives wrote in his report that Tesla has managed to comfortably hit vehicle delivery guidance of 360,000 to 400,000 units for its fiscal year. The number of vehicles it managed to deliver for the period represented a 65 percent year-on-year increase. The analyst further pointed out that the rally may mostly be due to hype surrounding the company's global expansion, but there are clear underlying fundamentals in Tesla's ability to accomplish its own targets.
