(SeaPRwire) –
By: Christian Pierce
Last Thursday, Tesla stock jumped 4.6% to $399.15. The five trading days before that, it had dropped nearly 10%. Early market chatter blamed retail investors selling Tesla shares to fund SpaceX IPO purchases. But this simple explanation leaves out key details.
SpaceX’s IPO raised roughly $75 billion total. It allocated 30% of shares to retail investors, far more than most IPOs. JPMorgan upgraded Tesla to neutral on June 5, lifting its price target from $145 to $475. Evercore also upgraded Tesla to outperform that same day. Truist cut its price target to $400, keeping a hold rating. Forty-four analysts cover Tesla, with an average target of $404.37. Institutional investors hold 66.2% of Tesla’s outstanding stock. Nuveen trimmed its Tesla stake by 2.6% in Q4, but still ranks it as its ninth largest holding. Tesla reported earnings on April 23. It posted EPS of $0.41, slightly above the $0.39 consensus. Revenue hit $22.39 billion, up 15.8% year over year. That missed analyst estimates of $22.96 billion. Tesla’s 12-month trading range sits between $288.77 and $498.83. Its 50-day moving average is $397.84. The 200-day moving average is $416.08. The Nasdaq fell 6% that same week. Tesla’s beta of 1.8 made its 10% slide align with historical market trends. The retail portion of SpaceX’s raise only equals about 2% of Tesla’s total market cap. Not all the cash for SpaceX came from Tesla stock sales either.
The stock bounce this week is a mix of eased selloff pressure and analyst upgrades. Retail hype around SpaceX won’t drive long-term Tesla valuation shifts. The real driver will be ongoing institutional positioning and quarterly earnings performance.
Author bio: Christian Pierce, a chief financial columnist and markets commentator focused on global tech and auto equities.