Tesla achieves first-ever $10bn quarter
Tesla has posted its first-ever $10bn quarter following a successful year that saw its founder, eccentric billionaire Elon Musk, become the world’s richest person.
Tesla beat Wall Street estimates for fourth-quarter revenue after beating 2020 deliveries earlier this month on a steady rise in electric vehicle demand.
The carmaker, led by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, said quarterly revenue rose to $10.74bn from $7.38bn a year earlier. Analysts had expected revenue of $10.4bn, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.
The success marks the company’s sixth straight quarterly profit after a poster year for the business.
Tesla has had a phenomenal year. The electric car manufacturer’s share price soared 700 per cent last year and the company was admitted into the S&P 500 index in December.
The soaring share price last year awarded Musk the title of the world’s richest person, pulling ahead of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
Tesla set a fresh record for vehicle delivery targets in 2020, delivering 499,950 vehicles during the year, well above Wall Street expectations of 481,261, although the number of vehicles delivered was just short of Musk’s half a million target.
Its market capitalisation has now reached almost $670bn, making it the sixth most valuable publicly-listed US company.