It has been seven years (and a day) since Elon Musk made the decision to take Tesla Inc. (TSLA) public, and what a financial ride it has been.
The company started off offering 13,300,000 shares at an IPO price of $17 a share. At the time of this writing, TSLA is trading above $360 per share, indicating that TSLA was definitely a bet worth making for those playing the stock game back when the shares were in the teens.
Although the stock is fairly successful now, there were always those who doubted Musk and the company’s longevity on the stock market.
“Optimism, pessimism, f*** that; we’re going to make it happen. As God as my bloody witness, I’m hell-bent on making it work,” Musk told Wired in 2008.
Despite that unbridled passion, Tesla still does get its fair share of naysayers. Firm Hedgeye Industrials lists Tesla as a good short due to it expecting Tesla’s “exciting concepts [to] transition to mundane execution,” essentially saying that the shimmer of new technology will dim as Tesla and its competitors continually chase after the next big thing, giving audiences tech fatigue. The website also calls the EV company’s valuation “silly.”
In a stark contrast to that valuation, TSLA did hit record highs by closing bell last Friday.
The excitement first ignited last Tuesday when shares rose 1.5% after Bloomberg broke the story of the potential Tesla plant being built in Shanghai’s Lingang development zone. Shares of Tesla hit all-time intraday highs at $378.88.
Year-to-date, TSLA saw 73% gain going into Tuesday.
That record was then dwarfed Thursday when shares reached a new all-time high at $385, spurred by the EV company confirming it is in fact in talks with the Shanghai municipal government to build a Gigafactory and manufacture cars in the city’s tech sector. TSLA popped 1.5% to $382 after the report, before peaking at a record of $385.
This week, TSLA started big, but dropped a little as was expected coming off last week’s highs. It went into Monday sailing above the previous $385 mark around $386.50, making for another record, before dipping going into the week hitting 370s and 360s before bottoming out around $355.95.
It ends the week around that mid-$360 mark, and we will look to see how Musk’s announcement about Model 3s this Sunday will play going into next week, and if the markets closing early on Monday and being off for Fourth of July will have a counter impact on the company’s overall standings.
