“Stormy
weather in Shortville,” Elon Musk tweeted cheekily to his eight million
followers on April 3. No kidding.
In the last
month, Tesla’s market cap has soared 23% to $49.3 billion, sending the electric
vehicle maker well past Ford to become America’s second-most-valuable car
company. The Palo Alto-based outfit now trails domestic leader General Motors
by a mere $1.2 billion.
Musk’s net
worth, meanwhile, has risen nearly $1.8 billion in the past thirty days. The
Tesla chief is now worth a record $14.8 billion, according to FORBES’ real-time
rankings of the world’s billionaires, making him America's 29th richest person.
His personal fortune has jumped more than $3.5 billion since the start of
December.
Tesla has
ridden a growing wave of investor fervor to its current market position. The
business, still unprofitable, trades at an astronomically high price to sales
multiple of 6.3, 20 times greater than that of GM. Some outsiders have
questioned whether the stock is overvalued.
Nonetheless,
shareholders continue to demonstrate overwhelming optimism, a sentiment further
buoyed this week when the company announced its best-ever quarterly production
and delivery results. Tesla is now gearing up for the summer launch of the
Model 3, a lower-cost version of its popular Model S vehicle.
Musk, 45,
made his first fortune selling software upstart Zip2, which he cofounded, to
Compaq in 1999 for a reported price of over $300 million. He then earned an
even more lucrative payout when Paypal, which he also cofounded, was acquired
by eBay for $1.4 billion in 2002. He joined Tesla in 2004 as a key investor and
eventually took over as chief executive in 2008 as the business teetered on the
edge of bankruptcy during the global financial crisis.
The South
African-born polymath currently has his hand in a host of other high-profile
initiatives, including a new tunneling project in Los Angeles and, most
notably, aerospace firm SpaceX, whose long term objective is sending humans to
Mars. SpaceX, like Tesla, has performed particularly well of late. On March 30,
it successfully launched a used orbital-class rocket, a landmark achievement
that may usher in a future of cheaper space travel.
To date,
Musk has managed to find success at his companies with seeming preternatural
ease. And with Tesla trading at an all-time high, short sellers beware.
(Forbes)
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