Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) stock is seeing strong bullish momentum in Friday’s trading. The electric vehicle (EV) company’s share price was up 6.9% as of 3:15 p.m. ET amid the backdrop of a 1.2% gain for the S&P 500 index and a 1.7% gain for the Nasdaq Composite index.
In addition to bullish momentum for the broader market today, Tesla is gaining ground thanks to positive industry reports and analyst coverage. In addition to a Reuters report stating the EV specialist was seeing seeing strong sales in China, the company’s stock is also getting a boost from a price target increase from Canaccord.
Reuters recently published a report on Tesla’s sales performance in China across 2024, and the analysis paints a bullish picture. Vehicle sales in China increased 8.8% year over year to reach more than 657,000. Even better, the report shows that vehicle sales accelerated above that rate to deliver growth of 12.8% and sales of 83,000 units last month. The results look particularly significant on the heels of Tesla’s recent vehicle deliveries and production report for the fourth quarter of 2024.
Tesla’s Q4 update announced that the company had produced 459,000 vehicles and delivered 495,000 vehicles in the period. While the performance wasn’t as bad as more recent projections had forecast, the results still came in below the average analyst estimate. The performance brought the company’s total deliveries across 2024 to 1.79 million vehicles, below the average Wall Street forecast for deliveries of 1.806 million vehicles. Tesla’s 2024 deliveries fell short of the roughly 1.8 million vehicles delivered in 2023, marking the first time that the company saw an overall decline for unit sales. With total deliveries falling short of expectations, signs of momentum in China present a significant bright spot.
In a note published before the market opened today, Canaccord maintained a buy rating on Tesla and raised its one-year price target on the stock from $298 per share to $404 per share. Following gains for the stock today, the new price target actually implies downside of roughly 0.4%.
Canaccord’s analysts think that Tesla’s business fundamentals justify valuation multiples that are in the same ballpark with other megacap tech peers including Nvidia, Apple, and Amazon. More importantly, the firm thinks that Tesla is positioned to capitalize on multiple “generational” growth opportunities in categories including self-driving vehicles, batteries, and robotics. So while Tesla’s one-year price target implied limited upside at the time of publication and has already been surpassed, Canaccord thinks that the EV leader has the makings of a long-term winner.
