Tesla to join S&P 500 stock market in December

Tesla shares are now included in the S&P 500 stock market index after all. Tesla’s inclusion will take place on 21 December. In addition, Tesla has apparently found a new construction manager for the Gigafactory in Grünheide within its own ranks.

The S&P 500 is a stock market index that measures the stock performance of 500 large companies listed on stock exchanges in the United States. Many market observers expected this step much earlier in the year when Tesla announced the fourth consecutive quarterly profit in the figures for the second quarter of 2020 since this is considered a kind of basic requirement. The S&P Committee did not officially explain why the company was not included at that time.

On the Monday after the close of trading, S&P announced to Dow Jones Indices that the Tesla share would be included in the world’s most important stock market index at the start of trading on 21 December 2020 with a rather unusual procedure. With its very high stock market valuation, Tesla would have a very high weighting in the index from the get-go. For this reason, investors are now to be consulted about the admission in two tranches. Further details have not yet been revealed.

Many funds and above all ETFs invest in stock exchange indices or are linked to their performance. According to Reuters, 500 investment funds indexed to the S&P 500 would have to sell $51 billion worth of shares of current S&P 500 members and in return purchase Tesla shares. Only then would their portfolios correctly reflect the composition of the S&P 500. The funds should now have a say in whether this huge transaction is to be carried out all at once or split up.

Among investors, the inclusion of Tesla has been controversially discussed for quite some time. While some investors point out that Tesla belongs to the index of the largest US companies with a market value of over $400 billion and is now the most valuable new addition to the index, sceptics believe that Tesla is in a bubble with a price gain of 450 per cent in 2020. They, therefore, warned against including Tesla in the S&P 500 at its current level.

The post-market announcement of the admission alone caused a 14 per cent jump in the price of Tesla shares.

In addition to the admission to the S&P 500, there is also news from Giga Berlin: the German Gigafactory apparently has a new site manager. After the dismissal of the previous site manager Evan Horetzky, Andre Thierig has been the new ‘Head of Gigafactory’ since the beginning of November, according to the German publication Tagesspiegel. He was previously responsible for the paint shop. As the newspaper reports, Thierig is said to have already signed a contract with the authorities with this job title. According to his LinkedIn profile, Thierig has only been working for Tesla since August. Before that, he had been active in various functions at Ford in Cologne for almost 20 years.

Tesla is also working to improve the recently criticized situation regarding the delivery and maintenance of its vehicles. At the beginning of November, another Tesla centre for sales, delivery and service was opened under one roof in Mannheim, Germany. In addition, a new delivery centre in Düsseldorf was reportedly moved into, and a service centre is apparently also currently being set up in Bremen in a former VW dealership.

At the end of October, Tesla revealed that it plans to open a new service centre every week for 2021 on a global scale. But even with the announced expansion of service capacities, the absolute number of service centres would continue to grow at the same rate as before.

yahoo.com, electrek.co, teslamag.de (in German, S&P 500), tagesspiegel.de (in German, Grünheide), teslamag.de (in German, service)