#Tesla poised to join S&P 500 after fourth-straight quarterly profit

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk
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Tesla delivered its fourth consecutive quarterly profit on Wednesday, scaling a long-elusive hurdle that finally makes it eligible to join the benchmark S&P 500 index.

The electric automaker — whose CEO Elon Musk has been battling with the state of California to keep the company’s factory open despite the coronavirus pandemic — delivered a profit of $2.18 per share, demolishing analyst forecasts for a 14-cent loss.

The surprise profit sent Tesla shares spiking more than 6 percent in extended trading.

A profit, as measured by generally accepted accounting principles, was the main metric that investors were looking for as inclusion in the S&P 500 is contingent on a company being profitable for a full year. Now, a slew of big investment funds that duplicate the S&P 500’s holdings will be forced to buy an estimated $40 billion worth of Tesla shares to avoid errors tracking the index’s performance.

The profit came despite forced shutdowns of Tesla’s Fremont, Calif. factory this spring that kneecapped the automaker’s production capacity. Musk branded the state-ordered closures “fascist” as he went head-to-head with California health authorities to get Tesla’s plant back open.

Meanwhile, Musk in May welcomed a son with Canadian singer Grimes, which the couple gave the bizarre name X Æ A-12. A few days earlier, Musk had attracted controversy by tweeting that Tesla’s stock price was “too high.”

Musk is now taking a victory lap less than two years removed from a tweet about taking Tesla private at $420 a share — a pot joke that scored him a $20 million fine and had him booted as chairman of Tesla’s board.

Since the pandemic hit the US in early March, Tesla’s stock is up more than 330 percent. The company’s market cap sits at $295 billion, making it the most valuable car company in the world, more than $85 billion ahead of No. 2 Toyota.

The stock rally has catapulted Musk into the top-10 list of the world’s richest people, with his $72 billion fortune currently placing him at No. 8, according to Forbes. He has added $16 billion to his net worth since the beginning of July.

It has also lined Musk up for a more than $4 billion payday. When Tesla’s six-month market-cap average hits $150 billion, Musk will trigger the second tranche in his eye-popping $50 billion pay package and allow him to buy 1.69 million shares of Tesla at $350 a pop.

Those shares, combined with the first stock award which vested in May when Tesla’s six-month average hit $100 billion, can be flipped for a total profit of more than $4.2 billion at Tesla’s Wednesday closing price of $1,592.

Tesla also reported revenue of $6 billion for the quarter, beating the Street’s forecast of $5.4 billion.

Shares of Tesla were trading up 4.9 percent in extended trading Wednesday, at $1,670.68.