Investor's Corner
Tesla’s re-election bid for 3 board members challenged by activist firm
CtW Investment Group, an activist firm representing Tesla shareholders, recently voiced its opposition to the company’s bid to re-elect three of its board members — Antonio Gracias, Kimbal Musk, and James Murdoch. According to CtW, the three board members are a “holdover” from the company’s early days, and that Gracias, Musk, and Murdoch “exemplify the company’s failure to evolve.”
In a letter, CtW executive director Dieter Waizenegger wrote that Tesla needs to elect a board of directors that are independent and not personally bound to Elon Musk.
“Tesla has failed to hit critical production milestones and has consequently seen its past progress toward profitability sharply reverse. But instead of recognizing the need for independent and effective board leadership, Tesla has re-nominated three directors who exemplify the company’s failure to evolve,” the CtW executive wrote, according to a Bloomberg report.
According to Waizenegger, Gracias, who is currently Tesla’s lead independent director, holds both professional and personal ties with Elon Musk. The CtW executive director noted that Gracias is so close to to the Tesla CEO; he received the second Roadster that the company built. Valor Equity Management, a firm founded by Gracias, helped Tesla in funding rounds before the electric car maker went public in 2010.
“The lead independent director should be leading a process of renewing and modernizing the board by recruiting well-qualified, diverse, and independent directors with a combination of industry and governance experience. Given his longstanding conflicts, we see no likelihood that Mr. Gracias will change course and initiate this long overdue process,” Waizenegger wrote.
Waizenegger also opposed the re-election of Kimbal Musk, citing the food entrepreneur and investor’s lack of relevant industry experience. Similar concerns were expressed towards 21st Century Fox CEO James Murdoch as well, considering that he does not appear to have experience in either manufacturing and engineering — disciplines that are pertinent to Tesla’s operations and growth. Overall, Waizenegger believes that the time is now right for the electric car maker to modernize its board of directors.
“Now that Tesla’s IPO is eight years in the past, a modernization of the Tesla board is long overdue,” the CtW executive wrote.
CtW’s oppositions to board appointments have borne fruit in the past. Just last year, the activist firm successfully organized a campaign encouraging Urban Outfitters shareholders to vote against the appointment of a director, citing the lack of independence among the company’s executives. The activist firm also conducted a similar campaign against Tiffany & Co.’s directors, and while the response from the jewelry giant’s shareholders was quite muted, the company eventually appointed a new CEO and chairman.
The vote for the re-election of Antonio Gracias, Kimbal Musk, and James Murdoch is scheduled for Tesla’s annual shareholders’ meeting on June 5.
As we noted in a previous report, Tesla shareholders recently received some good news from JL Warren Capital LLC. In a note to its clients, the financial firm stated that orders from a Model 3 supplier show “encouraging signs” that the production ramp of the mass market electric car could hit a steady rate of 5,000 Model 3 per week in the third quarter.
Investor's Corner
Tesla gets bold Robotaxi prediction from Wall Street firm
Last week, Andrew Percoco took over Tesla analysis for Morgan Stanley from Adam Jonas, who covered the stock for years. Percoco seems to be less optimistic and bullish on Tesla shares, while still being fair and balanced in his analysis.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) received a bold Robotaxi prediction from Morgan Stanley, which anticipates a dramatic increase in the size of the company’s autonomous ride-hailing suite in the coming years.
Last week, Andrew Percoco took over Tesla analysis for Morgan Stanley from Adam Jonas, who covered the stock for years. Percoco seems to be less optimistic and bullish on Tesla shares, while still being fair and balanced in his analysis.
Percoco dug into the Robotaxi fleet and its expansion in the coming years in his latest note, released on Tuesday. The firm expects Tesla to increase the Robotaxi fleet size to 1,000 vehicles in 2026. However, that’s small-scale compared to what they expect from Tesla in a decade.
Tesla expands Robotaxi app access once again, this time on a global scale
By 2035, Morgan Stanley believes there will be one million Robotaxis on the road across multiple cities, a major jump and a considerable fleet size. We assume this means the fleet of vehicles Tesla will operate internally, and not including passenger-owned vehicles that could be added through software updates.
He also listed three specific catalysts that investors should pay attention to, as these will represent the company being on track to achieve its Robotaxi dreams:
- Opening Robotaxi to the public without a Safety Monitor. Timing is unclear, but it appears that Tesla is getting closer by the day.
- Improvement in safety metrics without the Safety Monitor. Tesla’s ability to improve its safety metrics as it scales miles driven without the Safety Monitor is imperative as it looks to scale in new states and cities in 2026.
- Cybercab start of production, targeted for April 2026. Tesla’s Cybercab is a purpose-built vehicle (no steering wheel or pedals, only two seats) that is expected to be produced through its state-of-the-art unboxed manufacturing process, offering further cost reductions and thus accelerating adoption over time.
Robotaxi stands to be one of Tesla’s most significant revenue contributors, especially as the company plans to continue expanding its ride-hailing service across the world in the coming years.
Its current deployment strategy is controlled and conservative to avoid any drastic and potentially program-ruining incidents.
So far, the program, which is active in Austin and the California Bay Area, has been widely successful.
Investor's Corner
Tesla analyst realizes one big thing about the stock: deliveries are losing importance
Tesla analyst Dan Levy of Barclays realized one big thing about the stock moving into 2026: vehicle deliveries are losing importance.
As a new era of Tesla seems to be on the horizon, the concern about vehicle deliveries and annual growth seems to be fading, at least according to many investors.
Even CEO Elon Musk has implied at times that the automotive side, as a whole, will only make up a small percentage of Tesla’s total valuation, as Optimus and AI begin to shine with importance.
He said in April:
“The future of the company is fundamentally based on large-scale autonomous cars and large-scale and large volume, vast numbers of autonomous humanoid robots.”
Almost all of Tesla’s value long-term will be from AI & robots, both vehicle & humanoid
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 11, 2023
Levy wrote in a note to investors that Tesla’s Q4 delivery figures “likely won’t matter for the stock.” Barclays said in the note that it expects deliveries to be “soft” for the quarter.
In years past, Tesla analysts, investors, and fans were focused on automotive growth.
Cars were truly the biggest thing the stock had to offer: Tesla was a growing automotive company with a lot of prowess in AI and software, but deliveries held the most impact, along with vehicle pricing. These types of things had huge impacts on the stock years ago.
In fact, several large swings occurred because of Tesla either beating or missing delivery estimates:
- January 3, 2022: +13.53%, record deliveries at the time
- January 3, 2023: -12.24%, missed deliveries
- July 2, 2024: +10.20%, beat delivery expectations
- October 3, 2022: -8.61%, sharp miss due to Shanghai factory shutdown
- July 2, 2020: +7.95%, topped low COVID-era expectations with sizeable beat on deliveries
It has become more apparent over the past few quarters that delivery estimates have significantly less focus from investors, who are instead looking for progress in AI, Optimus, Cybercab, and other projects.
These things are the future of the company, and although Tesla will always sell cars, the stock is more impacted by the software the vehicle is running, and not necessarily the vehicle itself.
Investor's Corner
SpaceX IPO is coming, CEO Elon Musk confirms
However, it appears Musk is ready for SpaceX to go public, as Ars Technica Senior Space Editor Eric Berger wrote an op-ed that indicated he thought SpaceX would go public soon. Musk replied, basically confirming it.
Elon Musk confirmed through a post on X that a SpaceX initial public offering (IPO) is on the way after hinting at it several times earlier this year.
It also comes one day after Bloomberg reported that SpaceX was aiming for a valuation of $1.5 trillion, adding that it wanted to raise $30 billion.
Musk has been transparent for most of the year that he wanted to try to figure out a way to get Tesla shareholders to invest in SpaceX, giving them access to the stock.
He has also recognized the issues of having a public stock, like litigation exposure, quarterly reporting pressures, and other inconveniences.
However, it appears Musk is ready for SpaceX to go public, as Ars Technica Senior Space Editor Eric Berger wrote an op-ed that indicated he thought SpaceX would go public soon.
Musk replied, basically confirming it:
As usual, Eric is accurate
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 10, 2025
Berger believes the IPO would help support the need for $30 billion or more in capital needed to fund AI integration projects, such as space-based data centers and lunar satellite factories. Musk confirmed recently that SpaceX “will be doing” data centers in orbit.
AI appears to be a “key part” of SpaceX getting to Musk, Berger also wrote. When writing about whether or not Optimus is a viable project and product for the company, he says that none of that matters. Musk thinks it is, and that’s all that matters.
It seems like Musk has certainly mulled something this big for a very long time, and the idea of taking SpaceX public is not just likely; it is necessary for the company to get to Mars.
The details of when SpaceX will finally hit that public status are not known. Many of the reports that came out over the past few days indicate it would happen in 2026, so sooner rather than later.
But there are a lot of things on Musk’s plate early next year, especially with Cybercab production, the potential launch of Unsupervised Full Self-Driving, and the Roadster unveiling, all planned for Q1.
Tesla gets bold Robotaxi prediction from Wall Street firm
Tesla Model Y L is gaining momentum in China’s premium segment
