Piper Sandler Issues Positive Forecast for Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) Stock Price

Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) had its price objective boosted by Piper Sandler from $400.00 to $500.00 in a report released on Monday morning, Marketbeat Ratings reports. The firm currently has an overweight rating on the electric vehicle producer’s stock.

Several other research analysts also recently weighed in on TSLA. Robert W. Baird raised Tesla from a “neutral” rating to an “outperform” rating and upped their target price for the stock from $320.00 to $548.00 in a research note on Friday. Benchmark reaffirmed a “buy” rating and set a $475.00 target price (up from $350.00) on shares of Tesla in a research note on Thursday, June 26th. Glj Research reaffirmed a “sell” rating on shares of Tesla in a research note on Thursday, July 24th. Mizuho reduced their price objective on Tesla from $390.00 to $375.00 and set an “outperform” rating for the company in a research note on Tuesday, July 8th. Finally, Needham & Company LLC reissued a “hold” rating on shares of Tesla in a research note on Thursday, July 24th. Two equities research analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, nineteen have assigned a Buy rating, twelve have assigned a Hold rating and nine have assigned a Sell rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat, the stock currently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $324.53.

Tesla Trading Up 1.9%

Shares of TSLA stock opened at $434.21 on Monday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.07, a current ratio of 2.04 and a quick ratio of 1.55. The company has a market cap of $1.44 trillion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 250.99, a PEG ratio of 14.86 and a beta of 2.06. The stock has a 50 day simple moving average of $343.03 and a 200-day simple moving average of $309.87. Tesla has a 1-year low of $212.11 and a 1-year high of $488.54.

Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) last announced its earnings results on Wednesday, July 23rd. The electric vehicle producer reported $0.40 earnings per share for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of $0.43 by ($0.03). The business had revenue of $22.50 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $23.18 billion. Tesla had a return on equity of 7.98% and a net margin of 6.54%.The company’s quarterly revenue was down 11.8% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the previous year, the company earned $0.52 earnings per share. On average, equities research analysts expect that Tesla will post 2.56 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other Tesla news, Director James R. Murdoch sold 60,000 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction on Monday, September 15th. The stock was sold at an average price of $422.68, for a total value of $25,360,800.00. Following the completion of the sale, the director directly owned 637,031 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $269,260,263.08. This trade represents a 8.61% decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through this hyperlink. Also, CFO Vaibhav Taneja sold 2,606 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction on Monday, September 8th. The stock was sold at an average price of $352.38, for a total value of $918,302.28. Following the completion of the sale, the chief financial officer directly owned 9,856 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $3,473,057.28. This trade represents a 20.91% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold 208,606 shares of company stock valued at $77,360,462 in the last three months. 19.90% of the stock is currently owned by insiders.

Institutional Trading of Tesla

A number of hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently modified their holdings of the stock. Caldwell Trust Co acquired a new stake in shares of Tesla in the 2nd quarter worth $643,000. Base Wealth Management LLC grew its holdings in shares of Tesla by 7.2% during the 2nd quarter. Base Wealth Management LLC now owns 1,300 shares of the electric vehicle producer’s stock worth $413,000 after purchasing an additional 87 shares during the period. WT Wealth Management grew its holdings in shares of Tesla by 178.7% during the 2nd quarter. WT Wealth Management now owns 9,313 shares of the electric vehicle producer’s stock worth $2,958,000 after purchasing an additional 5,972 shares during the period. NWF Advisory Services Inc. grew its holdings in shares of Tesla by 3.6% during the 2nd quarter. NWF Advisory Services Inc. now owns 12,232 shares of the electric vehicle producer’s stock worth $3,886,000 after purchasing an additional 420 shares during the period. Finally, Alternative Investment Advisors LLC. purchased a new position in shares of Tesla during the 2nd quarter worth $258,000. 66.20% of the stock is owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

About Tesla

Tesla, Inc designs, develops, manufactures, leases, and sells electric vehicles, and energy generation and storage systems in the United States, China, and internationally. The company operates in two segments, Automotive, and Energy Generation and Storage. The Automotive segment offers electric vehicles, as well as sells automotive regulatory credits; and non-warranty after-sales vehicle, used vehicles, body shop and parts, supercharging, retail merchandise, and vehicle insurance services.