TSLA: Tesla Stock Just Made a Roaring Comeback—Up 12%. But Can It Sustain the Charge?

Tesla shares rallied as pent-up demand was finally unleashed at the first glimmer of hope. Is a fuller recovery in the cards?

🚀 Tesla Stock Rises 12%

• Tesla stock TSLA pumped 12% on Monday after widespread buying lifted the US equity market. The EV maker was the best-performing stock of the Magnificent 7 club, followed by Meta META, Amazon AMZN and Nvidia NVDA, each up by 3% or more.
• Why did Tesla outperform by such a wide margin? For one, the shares have been pummeled to the ground recently with all the drama around Elon Musk and his efforts to tear down whole departments. So pent-up demand unfurled, finally.

🚨 Tesla Shares Still Beat Down

• Prior to Monday’s jump, Tesla shares were languishing lower by more than 50% from their peak in January. Also, deliveries haven’t been great this year with January figures showing Europe’s sales were down by 50% or more in some regions. February sales, Bloomberg reported earlier today, plunged by 40%.
• All that gloom and doom for Tesla resulted in the stock logging its ninth straight losing week — the longest in Tesla’s history as a public company. (Tesla went the IPO route on June 29, 2010 at a $226 million market cap).

🎁 BYD Sales Dwarf Tesla’s Sales

• Meanwhile, the threat from the East persists. China’s BYD 1211 reported a 34% jump in fiscal-year net profit with revenue surging 29%. In dollar terms, BYD sold cars worth a total of $38.1 billion, blowing past Tesla’s quarterly sales figure of $25.7 billion. It was the second straight quarterly beat for the Chinese dragon.
• What’s more, BYD, which makes both EVs and plug-in hybrids, shipped a total of 1.5 million passenger vehicles for the quarter, including 595,000 all-electric models. Tesla shipped 496,000 EVs in the fourth quarter. With Tesla losing its top spot, can the EV maker sustain its share-price rise? Maybe the company’s key man shouldn’t be MIA.