Tesla (TSLA) stock popped more than 3% Tuesday on the heels of promising global electric vehicle sales data and media reports indicating Chinese authorities could allow the EV giant’s CEO Elon Musk to buy the US operations of social media platform TikTok.
The sale would be part of a contingency plan as a deadline approaches for the platform owned by Chinese parent company ByteDance to either divest or face a US ban. Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal reported that Chinese officials have discussed the option of selling TikTok’s US unit to Musk, who is also the CEO of X, formerly known as Twitter.
A TikTok spokesperson responded to the Bloomberg report by saying “we cannot be expected to comment on pure fiction.”
NasdaqGS – Nasdaq Real Time Price • USD
409.62 – (+1.56%)
As of 10:42:53 GMT-5. Market open.
Shares of Tesla extended gains from Monday when the stock flipped into positive territory in late afternoon trading, ending the session up more than 2%.
The rise comes as research firm Rho Motion reported that global sales of fully electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids rose 25.6% year-on-year to 1.9 million in December.
Although sales slowed for a second consecutive month, 2024 proved to be a record year with 17.1 million units sold.
FILE – Elon Musk speaks as part of a campaign town hall in support of Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump in Folsom, Pa., Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File) · ASSOCIATED PRESS
Broadly, Wall Street has been taking note of Elon Musk’s reach across a variety of companies and data collection spanning across everything from electric vehicles and satellites to social media.
On Monday Morgan Stanley’s Adam Jonas released a note on Tesla, making a bull case for $800 per share, while raising his 12 month price target on the stock from $400 to $430.
“In our view, Tesla’s recent share price appreciation has begun to discount the expanding ‘surface area’ between Tesla and physical AI including the company’s natural advantages in terms of data collection, robotics, energy storage, AI/compute, manufacturing and supporting infrastructure – including the benefits of working across Elon Musk’s other companies (SpaceX, xAI, etc),” wrote Jonas.
Tesla shares have been a proxy for the ‘Trump trade’ following the presidential elections in early November. Shares are up roughly 65% since Donald Trump’s White house victory.
This week’s stock movement is a reversal from recent trends as investors rotated out of tech stocks in reaction to pared down expectations of Fed rate cuts this year.
Tesla shares off roughly 13% from their all-time high close of $479.86 on December 17.
Ines Ferre is a senior business reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on X at @ines_ferre.
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