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Summary
- As Tesla's market capitalisation crosses USD 500 billion, CEO Elon Musk has surpassed Bill Gates in the list of wealthiest people, taking on the position of world's second wealthiest person.
- Tesla surpasses the collected market value of most of the top automaking companies.
- Morgan Stanley upgraded Tesla to a buy-equivalent overweight rating.
On 24 November, Tesla finished the trading day with a market capitalisation of more than USD 500 billion for the first time. As electric vehicle car company's market value crossed the USD 500 billion-mark, Musk's net worth increased by nearly USD 7 billion to USD 128 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
With this achievement, Tesla CEO Elon Musk surpasses Bill Gates in the list of wealthiest people in the world and takes the world's second-richest ranking. Musk and Gates’ disagreement has been quite apparent on things like Covid-19 pandemic and electric cars. It all began when Bill Gates said that even though he believed Tesla had helped drive electric-car innovation, he had purchased one from Porsche.
Musk is currently trailing Amazon’s Jeff Bezos who is currently the world's wealthiest person with a net worth of USD 182 billion. It a huge jump from January 2020 rankings when Elon Musk was at rank 35 in the world's wealthiest people's list.
In 2017, Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos occupied the top spot of the ranking list, replacing Bill Gates who held the spot for years. However, Gates's net worth of USD 127.7 billion could have been bulkier if he had not been donating to charities over the years. He has donated over USD 27 billion to his namesake foundation.
Despite the ongoing pandemic crisis which adversely impacted the working and poor class, the year has been a productive one for the world's wealthiest people. Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Mukesh Ambani and Bill Gates, all have added billions of dollars to their net worth in this pandemic-stricken year.
Tesla grows massively in a short period
Last year, when Tesla's market cap was under USD 45 billion, Elon Musk predicted that the autonomous vehicles, which were still a work in progress, would boost the car company's market cap to USD 500 billion.
The electric car manufacturing company is now giving a tough competition to the world's major auto companies. Tesla is now worth more than the consolidated market value of most of these companies including Volkswagen, GM, Ford, Toyota, Fiat Chrysler, and its merger partner PSA Group.
Last month in October, the company recorded third-quarter revenue of USD 8.77 billion, its fifth consecutive quarter of profit. Tesla delivered a record number of 139,300 vehicles during the third quarter.
Another milestone that has pushed the Tesla shares higher is S&P Global’s announcement about Tesla’s imminent addition to the S&P 500 in December. The stocks are in demand among many money managers with funds that track the S&P 500. Furthermore, the third week of November witnessed Morgan Stanley upgrading Tesla to a buy-equivalent overweight rating.
Also read: Tesla smashes market estimates in Q3; General Motors reveals EV plans
