Elon Musk nears Jeff Bezos’ net worth; Tesla sets course for Facebook’s valuation

The first day of 2021 proved quite remarkable for Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA), with the electric car maker’s valuation passing the $700 billion mark during Monday’s intraday. Considering that Tesla shares ended the day at $729.7 per share with a market cap of $691 billion, CEO Elon Musk has now closed the gap between his net worth and that of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, currently the world’s richest person. 

Elon Musk’s net worth is currently listed in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index at $175 billion, just $11 billion short of Jeff Bezos’ net worth of $186 billion. A significant amount of Musk’s net worth is tied to Tesla, which means that if the electric car maker continues its momentum, it may only be a matter of time before the CEO meets or perhaps even passes the Amazon founder’s net worth. 

It was not just Elon Musk’s net worth that met a milestone on Monday. Tesla shares reached as high as $744.49 per share as well, giving the company a market cap of over $700 billion for the first time. Dow Jones Market Data shows just how rapidly Tesla’s market cap has risen. The electric car maker took 111 trading days to go from $100 billion to $200 billion, for example, but it only took TSLA 13 trading days to go from $200 billion to $300 billion. 

Dow Jones Market Data on TSLA is based on the basic share count of about 950 million shares. As noted by Barron’s, however, Tesla reported about 1.1 billion fully diluted shares outstanding in its Q3 2020 report. This difference between basic and diluted shares is due to factors such as management stock options, restricted share units, and stock warrants. With these 1.1 billion shares outstanding, Tesla actually hit about $820 billion in market value on Monday. 

In comparison, Facebook’s basic and diluted share counts, at least based on the social media giant’s Q3 financial report, are listed at 2.85 billion and 2.89 billion shares, respectively. This means that on a fully diluted basis, Facebook is worth about $780 billion today. That’s lower than Tesla’s market cap with its 1.1 billion shares outstanding. It should also be noted that the difference between Tesla’s basic and diluted shares is quite large due in no small part to Elon Musk, who gets most of his compensation through stock awards that are directly tied to Tesla’s performance. 

As of writing, Tesla stock is trading at $724.85 per share during Tuesday’s opening bell. 

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