(06 January 2020)DAILY MARKET BRIEF 1:Tesla Faces Fresh Challenges After Hitting 2019 Delivery Record

Tesla Inc. made good on Chief Executive Elon Musk's promise of boosting production and delivering at least 360,000 electric vehicles in 2019, sending shares to new heights and increasing expectations for this year. But the road ahead for the Silicon Valley auto maker comes with a familiar challenge: execution. It also takes Tesla down a path in which its fortunes rest, to an unprecedented degree, on how it performs overseas -- particularly in China, the electric vehicle maker's top foreign market. The company has begun making local deliveries of China-made Model 3 compact cars after constructing a factory there in a blazing fast year. And it is gearing up to start production of a new Model Y compact sport-utility vehicle later this year. "2020 represents a pivotal year for Musk & Co., as ultimately this will be the year the bulls have been waiting for with China coming on board and Musk's grand [electric-vehicle] vision starts to potentially take hold," Dan Ives, an analyst for Wedbush Securities, said Friday in a note to investors. "China remains the major swing factor." Shares posted a nearly 5.5% gain during trading Friday after Tesla said it delivered 112,000 electric vehicles in the final three months of the year. That was up 23% from a year earlier and exceeded Wall Street expectations for 106,000 deliveries.

By Vincent Mivelaz