Tesla surges To Its Highest Level Since 2017 as its $1.8Billion Bond Hits A Crucial Milestone

On Wednesday, trading at face value for the first time since its issuance in 2017, Tesla’s high-yield bond leaped to its highest levels ever.

The 5.3% Tesla bond is scheduled to mature in 2025. A bond’s face value is the amount due to the bondholder once the debt reaches maturity.

The $1.8 billion debt offering reached a low of 81 cents on the dollar in May, and traded below its nominal value for years as Tesla faced production delays, fervent cash burn, and numerous bets against the firm’s success.

Tesla’s Tuesday jump pushed its market value past the $80.8 billion record set by Ford in 1999, establishing the company as the highest-valued US automaker in history. The debt’s record price arrived in tandem with an all-time high for the automaker’s stock.

The shares are already up 19% year-to-date. Tesla stock continued its streak through Wednesday, rising about 5% to $492.14 by market close.

Tesla opened the doors to its new Gigafactory in Shanghai on December 30 and shipped its first Model 3 sedans from the plant on Monday. China-built cars could help the company avoid trade-war tariffs and can sell at a lower price than imported, US-built models.

The Gigafactory also gives Tesla new exposure to China’s rapidly expanding electric-vehicle market, and CEO Elon Musk suggested the company could even design a new model in the country.

“Something that would be super cool So we’re going to do it is to try to create a China design and engineering center to actually design an original car in China for worldwide consumption,” Musk said, “I think this will be very exciting.”

Tesla has 10 “buy” ratings, 11 “hold” ratings, and 15 “sell” ratings from analysts, with a consensus price target of $329.02, according to Bloomberg data.

The electric-vehicle maker has enjoyed a slew of positive results in recent weeks. Tesla on Friday released better-than-expected vehicle deliveries for 2019, sending out 112,000 cars in the fourth quarter while Wall Street expected deliveries to hit 106,000. The fourth-quarter deliveries helped drive a 50% increase in total deliveries from 2018.