Elon Musk expanded to his lead as the world’s richest person after Tesla Inc reported record quarterly sales that were far above Wall Street projections.
Riding out worldwide chip shortages as it ramped up China manufacturing, Musk began 2022 on a high note.
According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Elon Musk’s net worth increased by $30.5 billion to $300.8 billion on Monday.
At 2:21 p.m. in New York, Tesla’s stock had risen 12.2 percent to $1,186.31 after the company’s fourth-quarter data easily above analysts’ expectations for auto-deliveries.
Tesla’s shares increased by about 50% in 2021, bringing its market capitalization to over $1 trillion. Musk, who owns roughly 18 percent of Tesla, has sold more than $10 billion in shares since November as part of a strategy to generate cash to pay taxes.
Last year, his net worth topped $340 billion, surpassing John D. Rockefeller’s peak inflation-adjusted net worth, momentarily making him the richest person in contemporary history.
Meanwhile, Tesla Inc. reported record quarterly deliveries on Sunday, significantly above Wall Street expectations as the company battled global chip shortages while ramping up manufacturing in China.
It was the sixth consecutive quarter of record deliveries for the world’s most valuable automaker. In the fourth quarter, Tesla, headed by billionaire CEO Elon Musk, delivered 308,600 cars, greatly exceeding analyst expectations of 263,026 vehicles.
Tesla’s October-December deliveries were up over 30% year over year and nearly 70% higher than the previous quarter’s record deliveries.
Musk commended and praised the entire Tesla team all over the world for the tremendous effort they put in through his Twitter handle.
His electric car company increased manufacture in China despite rising competition and regulatory pressure from consumer complaints about product safety. The firm raised annual deliveries by 87 percent to 936,172 automobiles in 2021, compared to the previous year.
Despite chip shortages, Deutsche Bank forecasted that Tesla would deliver over 1.5 million vehicles this year, according to a report released on Friday.
According to Musk, Tesla updated software to use less scarce processors, given the fact that it designs some chips in-house, unlike most carmakers.
Tesla will be able to maintain an annual growth rate of more than 50% for “quite a while,” Musk said in October of last year.
Despite challenges in production at its new plants and supply chain issues, Gene Munster, managing partner at venture capital company Loup Ventures, predicted that Tesla deliveries would increase to 1.3 million vehicles this year.
In October, Tesla Chief Financial Officer Zachary Kirkhorn said it’s difficult to say how quickly the firm will be able to ramp up production at new factories in Texas and Berlin, which will use new car technology and teams.
Tesla vocalized in October that it hoped to construct its first production cars at both locations by the end of 2021, although it is unclear whether it achieved that goal.
Follow and connect with us on Facebook, LinkedIn & Twitter
