Since it went public eight years ago, Tesla’s share price has risen nearly 2,000 percent.
Elon Musk has said he expects Tesla to turn a profit in the third and fourth quarters of 2018. There is a bit of skepticism on Wall Street as to whether the company will actually be able to manage that, at least twice in a row.
To be fair, Tesla has had two profitable quarters so far.
But the success of its stock is especially stark considering that its market value is $56.7 billion, surpassing Ford’s market value of $43.2 billion and General Motors‘ value of $55.5 billion. This is despite the fact that Ford and GM sell several times the number of cars Tesla does, and have pretty consistently delivered profits over the last several quarters.
And bullish investors point to a number of other firms that have had trouble turning a profit over the years, some of which have eventually become money makers.
Here is a sample: