Photo credit: Tesla

Electric carmaker Tesla has surely been on a tear as of late, with its stock rallying more than 60% in a two-week period. On Monday alone, Tesla’s shares surged 7% to a record high of about $1,500, equating a nearly $300 billion market capitalization. Tesla is now the world’s most valuable carmaker, having recently beat Toyota to the position despite making much lesser cars and minting sizeably lesser revenues than the Japanese automaker. Tesla’s latest rally comes after it slashed the price of its Model Y crossover by $3,000.

Monday’s surge alone added $24 billion to Tesla’s market capitalization. For comparison, automaker General Motors, which reported $137 billion in 2019 sales (over five times Tesla’s), has a total market capitalization of about $35 billion. Investor excitement is the primary factor here, as Tesla is growing faster and seems to have much more potential market to capture than traditional automakers. In 2019, Tesla reported $24.6 billion in revenue, compared to $21.4 billion in the year before. General Motors, on the other hand, actually had declining revenues in comparison to the previous year in 2019.

Investors are betting on Tesla delivering more vehicles and possibly reporting a profit in the second quarter of this year. If Tesla reports another quarterly profit, it’ll mark the company’s first cumulative four-quarter profit, which is itself a requirement to be added to the famed S&P 500 index.