Tesla Inc. shares recorded their biggest monthly gain in almost a year to cap October with an all-time high market value.

Shares of the electric-vehicle maker surged 44 per cent in October, their biggest monthly climb since November 2020. The stock closed up 3.4 per cent in New York on Friday, the last trading day of the month.

Tesla kicked off October with a blockbuster deliveries report for the third quarter, followed by strong earnings for the period and the icing on the cake -- an order of 100,000 vehicles from car-rental company Hertz Global Holdings Inc. While the shares were already on a strong streak for the past five months, these headlines supercharged them and took Tesla’s market valuation to over US$1.1 trillion, amid stronger evidence that EVs are finally going mainstream. 

Wall Street followed suit, with several analysts raising their price targets on the company, citing higher estimates for production and sales. 

“We now expect Tesla’s sales volume to max out around 11.5 million units in 2030, which likely implies a #1 ranking in terms of worldwide market share,” Piper Sandler analyst Alexander Potter wrote in a note earlier this week, and raised his price target to a Wall Street-high of US$1,300 from US$1,200.