Tesla’s stock (TSLA) was up over 4% in early trading this morning after CEO Elon Musk spent his weekend answering questions on Twitter about the newly revealed Model 3 and sending out updates about the number of reservations Tesla is accumulating.
Since Tesla unveiled the vehicle last week, 8 financial analysts issued new notes updating their analysis of Tesla’s outlook and currently the general consensus is a “buy”, but with an average price target of $253 – representing only a ~6% upside.
Though some predictions are more optimistic. For example, Analyst Andrea James from Dougherty & Co was among the first to issue a new note with a price target increase to a street high of $500 per share (from $355).
Musk confirmed that Tesla had over 276,000 Model 3 reservations by the end of Saturday. The CEO said that he will update the number one more time on Wednesday.
Beside indicating strong the demand for the vehicle, the reservation process is also providing Tesla with ~$276 million in deposits, which is basically the equivalent of an interest-free loan.
In term of backlog value, if everyone who reserved the vehicle was to order it, an estimated average sale price of $42,000 (estimated by Musk himself) would bring the total value of pre-orders to ~$11.5 billion.
Tesla is due to release its delivery results for the first quarter 2016 today. We will keep an eye out for that. Also if you want to follow Tesla’s Model 3 reservation tally: Tesla has now over 276,000 Model 3 reservations – timeline of reservation updates
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The Wednesday reservation report is going to be very interesting. It’ll give us a lot of information.