Tesla’s stock price jumped toward a new record early Monday after the company nearly reached its goal of delivering half a million vehicles in 2020. Shares in the electric-car maker climbed about 2.4 percent to $722.32 in premarket trading as of 7:10 a.m., putting the stock on track to hit a new all-time high after the year’s first opening bell. The bounce came two days after Tesla reported production and delivery numbers for 2020 that were in line with its internal targets and better than Wall Street expected. The Silicon Valley giant delivered 499,550 vehicles last year, just shy of its target of 500,000 but ahead of analysts’ estimates of 481,261. Tesla also said it produced 509,737 cars in 2020, roughly 40 percent more than 2019’s levels. Despite falling slightly short of their delivery goal, Tesla and billionaire CEO Elon Musk rounded up and cast the numbers as a victory. As Tesla put it in a press release, the company “produced and delivered half a million cars” in 2020. “So proud of the Tesla team for achieving this major milestone!” Musk said on Twitter Saturday. “At the start of Tesla, I thought we had (optimistically) a 10 [percent] chance of
FIAT CHRYSLER AUTOMOBILES (FCA), an Italian-American carmaker, and PSA Group, the French owner of Citroën and Peugeot, do not like to dwell on their shared past. When PSA acquired Chrysler Europe in 1978 for a nominal $1 it picked up some struggling British and French marques and a heap of debt. That tie-up crashed a few years later with the demise of Talbot, the brand created from these motoring scraps. On January 4th shareholders of both firms voted to give it another go, acceding to a mega-merger agreed in 2019. Hopes seem higher this time. The name of the combined firm, Stellantis, is derived from the Latin for “brightens with stars”. Stardust is sadly lacking from an industry that, along with many others, has taken a beating in the pandemic. But the creation of the world’s fifth-largest carmaker by vehicles produced (see chart) is well set to deal with the effects of covid-19—and to navigate the other difficulties facing the automotive business. The pandemic has sent screeching into reverse an industry that was already going backwards, as demand slumped in car-mad China. Annual worldwide sales fell from 94m units in 2017 to
Associated British Foods’ revenue declines in the first 16 weeks of fiscal 2021. The British multinational reports a 30% year over year decline in Primark sales. ABF expects its operating profit and full-year sales to be weaker than last year. In an announcement on Thursday, Associated British Foods plc (LON: ABF) said that its revenue saw a significant decline in the first sixteen weeks of the current financial year. The company attributed the decline primarily to its clothing subsidiary, Primark, that remained under pressure due to the newly imposed COVID-19 restrictions in the United Kingdom. Associated British Foods opened a little under 2% down on Thursday but regained almost the entire intraday loss on market open. The stock is now trading at a per-share price of £22.17. Are you looking for fast-news, hot-tips and market analysis? Sign-up for the Invezz newsletter, today. ABF reports a 30% year over year decline in Primark sales For the sixteen weeks that concluded on 2nd January, ABF reported £4.08 billion of revenue. In comparison, its revenue had come in at a higher £5.51 billion in the same period last year. The British multinational noted a 30% year over year decline in Primark