Investing.com – Shares in Tesla jumped around 3% on Monday following an analyst upgrade, pushing the firm past General Motors (NYSE:GM) and making it the largest U.S. automaker in terms of market capitalization.
Tesla’s market cap topped $51.4 billion on Monday, pushing past GM’s $50.4 billion after having pushed past Ford (NYSE:F), now valued at $45 billion, one week ago.
As a mode of comparison however, Tesla only sold just north of 76,000 cars in 2016, compared to GM’s record 10 million or Ford’s 6.7 million in the same year.
On another value metric, GM and Ford are generally considered to have a healthy balance sheet with a long history of turning profit, while Tesla has only managed two profitable quarters and recently raised capital in order to backstop its growth.
Still, Monday’s gains appeared to be spawned by a bullish note from Piper Jaffray who upgraded the firm to “overweight” from “neutral” and increased the price target to $368 from $223.
Although these analysts admit that the valuation is rich by any conventional metric, they insisted that “Tesla’s products have a captivating impact on consumers and shareholders alike; this advantage will be difficult to replicate.”
Shares (NASDAQ:TSLA) were last up 3.02% at $311.68.