Tesla stock jumps to another high as Mizuho more than doubles price target to $515

On By Littum

Tesla ( TSLA ) shares rose on Tuesday, hitting another record, adding to monster year-end gains as another Wall Street analyst says there’s more room to run.

Tesla shares rose 3.6% to close above $479 a share. The stock is up nearly 20% in the past five days, reflecting positive news reports about Tesla’s — and CEO Elon Musk’s — connection to President-elect Donald Trump.

Tesla stock is now up over 85% since election day.

The latest analyst to weigh in is Vijay Rakesh of Mizuho Securities, who upgraded Tesla to Outperform from Neutral and more than doubled his price target to $515 from $230.

Citing “idiosyncratic tailwinds,” Rakesh, like other analysts, believes the incoming Trump administration’s loosening of autonomous driving regulations, the elimination of consumer tax credits for electric vehicles — which Rakesh believes will ultimately benefit Tesla over others — and a more profitable low-cost EV relative to its peers gives Tesla room to run in 2025 and beyond.

“We expect TSLA’s leadership across electric vehicles, solar/battery storage and charging infrastructure will allow the company to better weather the storm than smaller established peers as the Trump administration removes subsidies for key end markets,” Rakesh wrote to clients. “We also see less stringent regulation of autonomous vehicles (‘AVs’) as an important tailwind to TSLA’s ability to scale FSD/Robo-Taxi deployments, where our base case scenario implies significant long-term revenues from AV operations.”

Bumping Mizuho’s price target at $515 shows the bank is playing catch-up due to missing out on the rally, but the firm’s new target implies around 10% more upside is possible. Mizuho and Rakesh see a “bull case” at $681 per share. share if Tesla can accelerate its Full Self-Driving (FSD) and robotaxi deployment and hit breakthroughs with its Optimus robot and AI development.

On Monday, Wedbush analyst Dan Ives kicked off Tesla’s good week with a price improvement as well.

“We estimate that AI and autonomous capabilities are worth at least $1 trillion to Tesla alone, and we fully expect under a Trump White House that these key initiatives will now be fast-tracked,” Ives wrote in a note to clients on 16 , where he increased his price target to $515 from $400.

This was reported by Reuters on Friday that Team Trump has recommended that the new administration remove an order from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) that requires automakers to report accidents involving self-driving or autonomous driving systems. Such a move would obviously be a good thing for Tesla. The company has had to report more than 1,500 crashes to NHTSA involving its FSD and Autopilot software, Reuters said.