Tesla stock (TSLA) pushed higher on Tuesday morning, hitting a record high and adding to monster end-of-year gains as another Wall Street analyst says there’s more room to run.
Tesla shares jumped as much as 2.5%, topping $470 per share for the first time. The stock is up 17% in the past five days, reflecting positive news reports regarding Tesla’s — and CEO Elon Musk’s — connection to President-elect Donald Trump.
Tesla stock is now up a whopping 87.2% since Election Day.
The latest analyst to weigh in is Vijay Rakesh of Mizuho Securities, who upgraded Tesla to Outperform from Neutral and more than doubled his price target to $515 from $230.
Citing “idiosyncratic tailwinds,” Rakesh like other analysts, believes loosening autonomous driving rules from the incoming Trump administration, the repeal of consumer electric vehicle tax credits — which Rakesh believes will ultimately benefit Tesla over others — and a more profitable low-cost EV versus its peers gives Tesla room to run in 2025 and beyond.
“We expect TSLA’s leadership across EVs, solar/battery storage, and charging infrastructure should allow the company to better weather the storm than less-established peers as the Trump administration removes subsidies for key end-markets,” Rakesh wrote to clients. “We also see less stringent regulation on autonomous vehicles (‘AVs’) as a key tailwind to TSLA’s ability to scale FSD/Robo-Taxi deployments, with our base case scenario implying significant long-term revenue from AV operations.”
Bumping Mizuho’s price target to $515 shows the bank is playing catch-up due to missing out on the rally, but the firm’s new target implies around 10% more upside is possible. Mizuho and Rakesh see a “bull case” of $681 a share if Tesla can accelerate its Full Self-Driving (FSD) and robotaxi deployments, and hit breakthroughs with its Optimus robot and AI development.
On Monday Wedbush analyst Dan Ives kicked off Tesla’s good week with a price target improvement as well.
“We estimate the AI and autonomous opportunity is worth at least $1 trillion alone for Tesla and we fully expect under a Trump White House these key initiatives will now get fast tracked,” Ives wrote in a note to clients on Dec. 16, upping his price target to $515 to from $400.
Reuters reported on Friday that Team Trump has recommended that the new administration remove a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) order requiring automakers to report crashes involving self-driving or autonomous driving systems. Such a move would obviously be a good thing for Tesla. The company has had to report more than 1,500 crashes to NHTSA involving its FSD and Autopilot software, Reuters said.