Tesla has a new biggest bull on Wall Street - and their optimism around the firm's solar business has shares soaring

• Piper Sandler lifted its price target for Tesla to $928 per share from $729, setting a new Wall Street-high for the surging stock.
• The company successfully "turned consumers into unwitting climate warriors" with its cars, but Tesla's growing energy generation and storage segments serve as its next frontier, analysts Alexander Potter and Winnie Dong wrote Tuesday.
• The team installed a solar charging system to test their hypothesis and called the early results "illuminating."
• Tesla shares are already nearing the lofty price target, closing at $858.40 on Tuesday and up as much as 8% in early Wednesday trading.
• Watch Tesla trade live here.

Piper Sandler has a new Wall Street-high price target for Tesla shares, but the stock is already nearing the lofty target in early Wednesday trading.

The research firm boosted its price target to $928 per share from $729 on Tuesday, praising "the superiority of Tesla's products" and its ability to turn customers "into unwitting climate warriors." The company's ability to combine flashy technology, blistering acceleration, and eco-friendliness has paid off, analysts Alexander Potter and Winnie Dong said. Tesla will now need to focus on its solar business if it seeks to further dominate the electric vehicle sector, they added.

"As curmudgeons rightly note, charging EVs with coal-based electricity isn't very 'green,'" the analysts wrote. "So Tesla's next challenge will entail making it cool to generate and store one's own solar power."

Tesla shares jumped on the upgrade, surging as much as 8% Wednesday morning. The stock is already up roughly 107% year-to-date, and is nearing its intraday record high of $969 after a brief slump in early February.

Shares closed 7.3% higher on Tuesday after Tesla received a price target upgrade from Morgan Stanley.

It's "easy to forget" that Tesla's battery and solar panel segment accounted for only 6% of sales in 2019, Potter and Dong wrote, but investors should monitor the segment for signs of future success. Tesla management expects the energy generation and storage business to rival its automotive segment in the future, suggesting there's plenty of room to run for the smaller product line.

To test their hypothesis, the analysts installed a solar system to charge a Model X. The system has already yielded "illuminating" results and show significant promise for Tesla's future in the energy generation industry, the team said.

"After logging 53,448 miles and surviving four Minnesota winters (with no noticeable range degradation), we are convinced that Tesla's automotive products offer a superior ownership experience. If history is any indication, we'll eventually be saying something similar about generating and storing our own solar power," Potter and Dong wrote.

Tesla closed at $858.40 on Tuesday, just 3.3% below its record-high close of $887.06 on February 4.

The automaker has seven "buy" ratings, 12 "hold" ratings, and 18 "sell" ratings from analysts, with a consensus price target of $505.76, according to Bloomberg data.

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