Connect with us

Investor's Corner

Elon Musk confirms $25 million TSLA purchase, boosts Tesla stake to nearly 20%

Published

on

In a regulatory filing late Monday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk confirmed that he had purchased a total of $25 million worth of TSLA stock in a public offering. Musk’s purchase was teased last week after Tesla announced that it was raising capital, which was followed by reports stating that the CEO was showing “preliminary interest” in increasing his stake on the electric car maker.

Monday’s filings revealed that Musk purchased 102,880 shares on May 2 at an effective price of $243.00, raising his total ownership of Tesla to 33,927,560 shares, or around 19.5% of the company. This is Musk’s first purchase of Tesla stock this year, his previous big purchase being $44.8 million worth of TSLA stock last year, at a time when the company was trading at $330.80 per share.

Tesla’s offering of 3,086,419 shares was priced at $243.00 each last week, though this number could be expanded up to 3,549,381 if underwriters use options to purchase additional shares. Tesla has also announced that it will be using the proceeds from the stock offering and the subsequent $1.60 billion (could be expanded to $1.84 billion) offering of senior notes to “further strengthen our balance sheet, as well as for general corporate purposes.”

Musk’s recent purchase of Tesla stock all but shows the CEO’s firm belief in the electric car maker, which has been facing headwinds in the market since the company released its lower-than-expected first-quarter vehicle delivery and production numbers. Tesla stock has tumbled around 23% year to date, while the S&P 500 has climbed 17%. Nevertheless, Tesla stock has been seeing some recovery since last week, on the heels of its capital raise and news of Elon Musk’s purchase of additional TSLA shares.

Tesla’s additional capital will give the company more runway as it attempts to roll out projects such as the Model Y SUV and the Tesla Semi, both of which are expected to start production in 2020. Other high-profile initiatives, such as the deployment of Full Self-Driving features and the setup of vehicle manufacturing lines at Gigafactory 3 in China, also stand to benefit from the company’s recent capital raise.

Advertisement

Tesla stock continues to be a battleground between the company’s supporters and critics. Just recently, Greenlight Capital founder David Einhorn, whose fund incurred losses of 34% in 2018, renewed his attacks against Elon Musk, calling the CEO’s vision for an autonomous ride-sharing service as “a lot of horse—t.” While speaking at the Sohn Investment Conference on Monday, Einhorn noted that “Napoleon once said, ‘Never interrupt your enemy when he’s making a mistake,’ so I won’t. Just watch the screen.”

On the other hand, Tesla has seen a vote of support from venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya, an early investor in Facebook. During a segment on CNBC’s Halftime Report, which was filmed before Tesla filed for a capital raise, the venture capitalist defended the electric car maker, stating that “the people who short this company are so short-sighted because the number of companies that would come out of the woodwork. You don’t think that Apple with $200 billion of cash backstops this company and has a chance to enter a trillion dollar market overnight by buying that business if it gets imperiled in any way? Google which already tried to buy it wouldn’t try to buy it again?”

Simon is an experienced automotive reporter with a passion for electric cars and clean energy. Fascinated by the world envisioned by Elon Musk, he hopes to make it to Mars (at least as a tourist) someday. For stories or tips--or even to just say a simple hello--send a message to his email, simon@teslarati.com or his handle on X, @ResidentSponge.

Advertisement
Comments

Investor's Corner

Tesla Q2 2025 earnings: What Wall Street expects

The company has faced mounting pressure this year, with TSLA stock down 19% year-to-date.

Published

on

Credit: Tesla Asia/X

Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) is set to release its second-quarter 2025 financial results after markets close on Wednesday, July 23. The company has faced mounting pressure this year, with TSLA stock down about 19% year-to-date. 

What Wall Street expects

As noted in a TipRanks report, Wall Street has remained cautious about the electric vehicle maker due to concerns about the EV segment in general, competition, reduced margins, federal EV regulations, and CEO Elon Musk’s political activities. 

Overall, Wall Street expects Tesla to post earnings per share of $0.39, down 25% from a year ago. Tesla’s revenue is forecasted to fall 13% to $22.19 billion, and analysts also expect the electric vehicle maker to post lower margins this quarter.

Analyst expectations

Tesla delivered approximately 384,120 vehicles in Q2, a 13.5% drop year-over-year, as per Main Street Data. The company also produced over 410,000 vehicles and deployed 9.6 GWh of energy storage products during the quarter. 

Ahead of the earnings call, Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Andres Sheppard reiterated a Buy rating and a $335 per share price target. He also adjusted his Q2 revenue forecast to $21 billion, down from his previous estimate of $24.1 billion. Despite short-term softness, Sheppard maintained his 2025 and 2026 projections, citing confidence in Tesla’s high-margin Robotaxi business model.

Advertisement

Barclays analyst Dan Levy kept a Hold rating with a $275 price target. He stated that the company faces “increasingly weaker fundamentals,” but he also suggested that Tesla’s Robotaxi story could drive optimism. Levy expects modest gross margin improvement quarter-over-quarter and flagged the full-year EPS estimate drop from $3.20 to $1.84. Delays in launching the affordable Tesla model remain a downside risk, Levy noted.

Continue Reading

Investor's Corner

Tesla needs to confront these concerns as its ‘wartime CEO’ returns: Wedbush

Tesla will report earnings for Q2 tomorrow. Here’s what Wedbush expects.

Published

on

Credit: Tesla

Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) is set to report its earnings for the second quarter of 2025 tomorrow, and although Wall Street firm Wedbush is bullish as the company appears to have its “wartime CEO” back, it is looking for answers to a few concerns investors could have moving forward.

The firm’s lead analyst on Tesla, Dan Ives, has kept a bullish sentiment regarding the stock, even as Musk’s focus seemed to be more on politics and less on the company.

However, Musk has recently returned to his past attitude, which is being completely devoted and dedicated to his companies. He even said he would be sleeping in his office and working seven days a week:


Nevertheless, Ives has continued to push suggestions forward about what Tesla should do, what its potential valuation could be in the coming years with autonomy, and how it will deal with the loss of the EV tax credit.

Tesla preps to expand Robotaxi geofence once again, answering Waymo

These questions are at the forefront of what Ives suggests Tesla should confront on tomorrow’s call, he wrote in a note to investors that was released on Tuesday morning:

“Clearly, losing the EV tax credits with the recent Beltway Bill will be a headwind to Tesla and competitors in the EV landscape looking ahead, and this cash cow will become less of the story (and FCF) in 2026. We would expect some directional guidance on this topic during the conference call. Importantly, we anticipate deliveries globally to rebound in 2H led by some improvement on the key China front with the Model Y refresh a catalyst.”

Ives and Wedbush believe the autonomy could be worth $1 trillion for Tesla, especially as it continues to expand throughout Austin and eventually to other territories.

In the near term, Ives expects Tesla to continue its path of returning to growth:

“While the company has seen significant weakness in China in previous quarters given the rising competitive landscape across EVs, Tesla saw a rebound in June with sales increasing for the first time in eight months reflecting higher demand for its updated Model Y as deliveries in the region are starting to slowly turn a corner with China representing the heart and lungs of the TSLA growth story. Despite seeing more low-cost models enter the market from Chinese OEMs like BYD, Nio, Xpeng, and others, the company’s recent updates to the Model Y spurred increased demand while the accelerated production ramp-up in Shanghai for this refresh cycle reflected TSLA’s ability to meet rising demand in the marquee region. If Musk continues to lead and remain in the driver’s seat at this pace, we believe Tesla is on a path to an accelerated growth path over the coming years with deliveries expected to ramp in the back-half of 2025 following the Model Y refresh cycle.”

Tesla will report earnings tomorrow at market close. Wedbush maintained its ‘Outperform’ rating and held its $500 price target.

Continue Reading

Investor's Corner

Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2025 earnings call: What investors want to know

Published

on

Credit: Tesla Asia/X

Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) is set to report its second-quarter 2025 financial results on Wednesday, July 23, after markets close. With this in mind, Tesla investors have aggregated their top questions for the company at its upcoming Q&A session.

The upcoming earnings report follows a mixed delivery quarter. Tesla produced over 410,000 vehicles and delivered more than 384,000 units globally. In the energy segment, Tesla deployed 9.6 GWh of storage products, continuing momentum for its Megapack business. Tesla’s vehicle sales are currently down year-over-year, though a good part of this was due to the Model Y changeover in the first quarter.

Following are Tesla investors’ top questions for management, as aggregated in Say.

  1. Can you give us some insight (into) how robotaxis have been performing so far and what rate you expect to expand in terms of vehicles, geofence, cities, and supervisors?
  2. What are the key technical and regulatory hurdles still remaining for unsupervised FSD to be available for personal use? Timeline?
  3. What specific factory tasks is Optimus currently performing, and what is the expected timeline for scaling production to enable external sales? How does Tesla envision Optimus contributing to revenue in the next 2–3 years?
  4. Can you provide an update on the development and production timeline for Tesla’s more affordable models? How will these models balance cost reduction with profitability, and what impact do you expect on demand in the current economic climate?
  5. When do you anticipate customer vehicles to receive unsupervised FSD?
  6. Are there any news for HW3 users getting retrofits or upgrades? Will they get HW4 or some future version of HW5?
  7. Have any meaningful Optimus milestones changed for this year or next, and will thousands of Optimus be performing tasks in Tesla factories by year-end?
  8. Will there be a new AI day to explain the advancements the Autopilot, Optimus, and Dojo/chip teams have made over the past several years? We still do not know much about HW4.
  9. Cybertruck ramp is now a year in, but sales have lagged other models. How are you thinking through boosting sales of such an incredible product?
  10. When will there be a new CEO compensation package presented and considered for the next stage of the company’s growth?

Tesla will release its Q2 update letter on its Investor Relations website after markets close on Wednesday. A live Q&A webcast with management will then follow at 4:30 p.m. CT (5:30 p.m. ET) to discuss the company’s performance and outlook.

Continue Reading

Trending