Tesla (TSLA 1.93%) shares have closed higher for six straight days, and a seventh looks likely after today's market closes. The rally has boosted shares of the electric vehicle (EV) leader by almost 40% in just the last month. Shares were higher again today by 6% as of 12:05 p.m. ET.
The most recent surge comes after Tesla reported relatively strong vehicle delivery results from the second quarter yesterday. That led to widely followed Wedbush analyst Dan Ives lifting his already lofty price target on the stock to near a Wall Street high among analysts following the company. Ives bumped his price target from $275 to $300 per share today. That would represent a gain of another 30% from yesterday's closing price.
EV demand is starting to look healthy again
Tesla delivered nearly 444,000 electric vehicles (EVs) in the second quarter. While that was a 4.8% decline compared to the prior-year period, it was higher than many analysts expected. And Ives thinks it's just the start of an acceleration in EV sales for Tesla. In his report today, Ives wrote:
With the majority of price cuts in the rearview mirror and demand stabilization globally for EVs, especially in China, we believe Tesla's march toward 2 million units annual trajectory should be reached over the coming quarters.
The optimism for Tesla stock isn't just about EVs, either. The company reported record deployments of its energy storage products. Its 9.4 GWh (gigawatt hours) of energy storage products deployed outpaced the previous record in the prior quarter by 129%.
That could help boost earnings and sales when the company reports its full second-quarter results on July 23. Investors are also looking forward to a potential catalyst from Tesla's robotaxi update coming on Aug. 8. Investors seem to want to be in the stock ahead of those updates.
