As forecasted by many in light of the Tesla share price’s relentless climb, leading to a revised net worth, Elon Musk is officially the world’s second-richest person, surpassing Microsoft founder Bill Gates. With a staggering US$127.9 billion to his name – US$100 billion of which was added in this year alone – Musk has impressively ascended all the way from #35 of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index‘s January 2020 rankings.
According to Bloomberg, approximately 75% of Musk’s wealth is comprised of Tesla shares (NASDAQ: TSLA). With a market capitalisation approaching US$500 billion – not to mention Tesla’s forthcoming inclusion within the S&P 500 starting from next month – for the time being, we can only expect Musk’s wealth to snowball with every passing day.
A year ago, Tesla was trading at around US$67 a share. At the time of this article’s writing, it’s sitting at over US$520 (representing a +35.2% gain this month; +526.9% gain year-to-date). Taking the “major inflection of electric vehicle demand” into consideration, the likes of Wedbush analyst Dan Ives is already predicting the market leader will soon achieve US$1,000 per share.
“With the sustained path to profitability and S&P 500 index inclusion achieved, the Tesla bull story is now all about a stepped up electric vehicle (EV) demand trajectory into 2021,” says Ives.
“We believe this demand dynamic will disproportionately benefit the clear EV category leader Tesla over the next few years… especially in the key China region, which we believe could represent ~40% of its EV deliveries by 2022, given the current brisk pace of sales with 150K+ deliveries in its first year out of the gates with Giga 3.”
The only individual standing between Elon Musk and his net worth from securing the top spot is, you guessed it, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos – who currently holds a comfortable US$54 billion lead. Below Musk and Gates sits LVMH chairman & CEO Bernard Arnault (US$105 billion), followed by Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg (US$102 billion), and legendary investor Warren Buffett (US$87 billion).
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