Wedbush Securities has improved its outlook for Tesla Inc., following stronger-than-expected quarterly deliveries.
On Sunday, Wedbush raised its price target for Tesla TSLA,
to $ 1,000 per share from $ 950, with a long-term bullish price of $ 1,300 per share. Tesla shares closed Thursday at $ 661.75 (markets closed Friday).
Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives also changed his rating from hold to outperform. “In our opinion, the Q1 delivery figures released on Friday were a paradigm shift,” he said in a note.
On Friday, Tesla reported first-quarter deliveries, its sales proxy, for a total of 184,800 vehicles, beating the FactSet consensus of 168,000. The Silicon Valley electric vehicle maker said it produced just over 180,000 vehicles in the period in what Ives called a “drop the mic” number.
“We now believe that Tesla could surpass 850,000 deliveries for the year with 900,000 as a broad target, despite chip shortages and various supply chain problems that persist in the auto sector,” Ives said Sunday. He added that “the staggering delivery figures coming out of China cannot be ignored as the trajectory in pace accounts for roughly 40% of Musk & Co. deliveries by 2022.”
Ives and his team also see that Tesla’s profitability will improve significantly over the next three to four years.
Tesla shares are down 6.2% year-to-date, but have soared 628% in the last 12 months.