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Tesla Stock Gains Monday As Model 3 Reservations Pass 276,000

Loading the player…   Tesla Motors ( TSLA ) stock climbed 4% in premarket trading Monday, compounding Friday’s gain as reservations for its new Model 3 electric car soared far beyond views. CEO Elon Musk tallied 276,000 reservations by the beginning of Sunday and said he’d give another update Wednesday. The pre-order period opened Thursday ahead of a Thursday-night reveal event. Musk said in Twitter posts that  he’s definitely going to have to rethink production planning. Tesla had expected only one quarter to one half of the 115,000 reservations that came in before anyone even got to see what the car looked like. The refundable reservations are $1,000 each and worth $11.6 billion dollars in revenue if everybody were to go through with a purchase. “While there was clearly a lot of excitement and optimism around both the car and the company, roughly one-third of the respondents we talked to sounded undecided on whether they would actually purchase when the option came up in two years,” Pacific Crest Securities analyst Brad Erickson said in a research note written Friday and distributed late Sunday. The focus now is on how all the numbers — and Tesla stock — will play out. The company has just effectively crowdfunded more than a quarter billion dollars from reservations. That’s more than it raised in its IPO. The 276,000 reservations worldwide also tops the number of electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles sold around the U.S. in the last two years by the entire auto industry. And it’s more than the 245,000 BMW passenger cars sold in the U.S. last year. Tesla delivered almost 51,000 electric vehicles — its Model S sedan and Model X crossover — last year worldwide. Tesla Stock Analysis Going into Monday, Tesla stock was just below where it started 2016. It closed Friday at 237.59 after hitting its highest point since early October. The stock isn’t highly rated by IBD now, factoring in its history of losses and earnings, stock performance and other factors. The Model 3 is the electric car meant for the entry-level luxury mass market, priced at $35,000 for the base model before any tax credits. Musk expects the average purchase price with add-ons to be $42,000. The car is seen as a challenger to BMW’s 3 Series and similarly priced models from Daimler ’s ( DDAIF ) Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen ’s ( VLKAY ) Audi and Toyota ’s ( TM ) Lexus, as well as electrics like General Motors ’ ( GM ) Chevrolet Bolt EV. Among the many things analysts and investors will be deconstructing is how much content from Tesla’s tech partners Nvidia ( NVDA ) and Mobileye ( MBLY ) go into the Model 3. Nvidia chips power the entertainment console in Tesla’s current vehicles. Mobileye is a maker of camera-based advanced driver assistance systems, and its technology is used by Tesla in conjunction with Autopilot self-driving car features. RELATED: Tesla Model 3 Reservations Hit 276,000 By Sunday

Nvidia Conference: Virtual Reality, Smart Cars, Bartender Robots

Robot bartenders, a drone racetrack and liquid nitrogen-concocted food? Silicon Valley geeks know how to get down — and that’s just after-hours. Next week, graphics-chipmaker Nvidia ( NVDA ) is slated to host its annual GPU Technology Conference at the San Jose McEnery Conference Center where virtual reality, artificial intelligence and self-driving cars will take center stage. In conjunction, Nvidia will hold its analyst day Tuesday, when CEO Jen-Hsun Huang is scheduled to deliver a keynote talk. RBC Capital analyst Mitch Steves expects Nvidia to offer an update on its Pascal GPU architecture, virtual-reality offerings and automotive efforts. Steves upped his price target to 36 from 32 on Nvidia stock, which he rates a sector perform. “Overall, we are positive on the VR opportunity and believe that growth rates will remain robust,” he wrote in a research report. Virtual reality is getting a big splash this year, and tech names  Apple ( AAPL ), IBM ( IBM ), Alphabet ( GOOGL ) and Tesla Motors ( TSLA ) are on deck to attend the GTC alongside myriad startups like BriSky, a maker of industrial drones, and Lucid, which makes 3D cameras. Under the GTC umbrella, BriSky, Lucid and 10 others will compete Wednesday for $100,000 during the Emerging Companies Summit. Another eight are slated to present their VR tech in an eight-minute elevator pitch for a chance at $15,000. There’s no denying the summit’s success, which helped launch VR headset-maker Oculus and video game-streaming service Gaikai into worldwide recognition. Facebook ( FB ) later acquired Oculus for $2 billion, and Sony ( SNE ) paid $380 million for Gaikai. Mellanox Technology ( MLNX ) and Xilinx ( XLNX ) will present during the OpenPower Summit, Tuesday through Friday. Moore’s Law physics make power a challenge within the industry. Data centers need faster chips, but those chips overheat quicker. Other splashy GTC events include keynotes from IBM Watson Chief Technology Officer Rob High and Toyota Research Institute (under Toyota Motors ( TM )) CEO Gill Pratt on Wednesday and Thursday. Separately, GTC will feature speakers from Nvidia, Twitter ( TWTR ), IBM, Baidu ( BIDU ), Google and Disney ’s ( DIS ) Pixar.

Facebook’s Oculus Rift Unveiled: Texas Instruments, Cypress Inside

Wall Street largely yawned Thursday after an iFixit teardown showed that Facebook ( FB )-owned Oculus Rift totes chips from STMicroelectronics ( STM ), Texas Instruments ( TXN ) and Cypress Semiconductor ( CY ). In afternoon trading on the stock market today , STMicroelectronics stock was up 1%, but shares of Texas Instruments and Cypress were down 1%. Shares of graphics chipmakers Nvidia ( NVDA ) and Advanced Micro Devices ( AMD ) were both down a fraction. Their GPUs (graphics processing units) are recommended for installation in PCs running the Rift headset. Oculus’ virtual reality headset has been in development for four years, according to iFixit, which also dismantled two earlier developmental versions. Facebook acquired Oculus in July 2014 for $2 billion. The Rift was finally unveiled March 28. On Wednesday, iFixit’s teardown sent shares of Cypress and Texas Instruments up as much as 5.8% and 2.4%, with both ending the day up about 1.6%. Cypress supplies a hub controller, which allows multiple USB-connected devices to be plugged in at once. Texas Instruments’ input comes in the form of an LED driver, which controls for image brightness and grayscale. STMicroelectronics supplied the Rift with an ARM-based microcontroller. But STMicroelectronics stock fell 1.1% Wednesday. Shares of Advanced Micro Devices and Nvidia flew as much as 4.2% and 2.4% Wednesday, before closing flat and up 1.1%, respectively. Image provided by Shutterstock .