Investor's Corner
Elon Musk’s bet-the-company Tesla Model 3 gamble appears to be paying off
Elon Musk recently described the Model 3 ramp as a “bet-the-company” situation, where the future of Tesla as a whole hinged on the success of the vehicle. Considering recent reports that are emerging about the electric car, it appears that while it might have taken longer than expected, Elon Musk’s Model 3 gamble is starting to pay off.
True to the CEO’s prediction, the 5,000/week milestone that the company achieved at the end of Q2 2018 seemed to have ushered in a new standard for the production of the electric car. Prior to the end of Q2, Tesla was still struggling to build the Model 3 according to its self-imposed targets. Despite doubts from Wall St. that the 5,000/week pace for the Model 3 was unsustainable, signs have emerged since the beginning of July suggesting that the production ramp of the vehicle this Q3 2018 would be better than what critics expect.
Tesla’s journey to reach this point, however, has been painful. In an interview earlier this month with Bloomberg, Elon Musk admitted that his Model 3 gamble came at a high price. Musk noted that while he believes that the Model 3’s production hell is about to end, the whole ordeal has caused him to develop some “permanent mental scar tissue.” In the same interview, Musk also mentioned that he is optimistic about the next few months, and that he would let Tesla’s results speak for themselves.
These results are starting to emerge in a steady stream now. Since the beginning of July, Tesla does not appear to have relaxed its push to deliver as many Model 3 as possible. Test drive programs were started, more than 19,000 new Model 3 VINs were filed in half a month, a new 5-minute Sign & Drive delivery system was adopted, and the Fremont factory appears to be as busy as ever. Tesla enthusiast Anner J. Bonilla, for one, recently shared a recent drive-by video of the Fremont factory (originally uploaded at the Tesla Model 3 Owner’s Club closed Facebook Group), and the facility’s premises were filled with semi trucks waiting to transport Tesla vehicles.
Near Fremont from FB. We are gonna need @boringcompany tunnels to distribute to delivery centers soon. pic.twitter.com/2fhhkADl97
— Anner J. Bonilla 🇵🇷🛩️🔋🔧 (@annerajb) July 18, 2018
Reports have also emerged that Tesla Senior Director of Investor Relations Aaron Chew recently met with investors and analysts, where he reportedly revealed that Tesla is targeting a sustained production rate of 5,000-6,000 Model 3 per week for the third quarter. To support this continued ramp, Tesla seems to be optimizing its workforce once more. Since July started, the electric car maker’s hiring activity has jumped 19%. On July 1, Tesla had 1,662 job openings, and by July 16, the company had 1,974 open positions. Among these, openings for sales and deliveries, such as Customer Experience Specialists and Delivery Experience Specialists were many. Openings for Field Service Associates, which would be assigned to Tesla Energy, have also shown a rise since the beginning of the month.
Perhaps Tesla’s biggest vote of confidence for the Model 3, recently came in the form of Sandy Munro of Munro & Associates, who recently completed his teardown and analysis of the electric car. While initially critical of the Model 3 due to its build quality, Munro ultimately admitted in a recent Autoline Network segment that he had to “eat crow” with regards to the electric car, adding that the vehicle, particularly its battery and electronics, were a “symphony of engineering.” Munro also concluded that based on his company’s teardown and analysis, the Model 3’s Long Range RWD variant could give Tesla a 36% profit. The Detroit veteran further noted that even the base Model 3, which costs $35,000, can give Tesla a profit of 18%.
Amidst signs that Tesla is maintaining its production ramp and Munro’s conclusions that the Model 3 is profitable, the company’s stock started to recover on Tuesday. After a steep dive on Monday after Musk’s incendiary tweets during the weekend, Tesla shares (NASDAQ:TSLA) climbed 4.06% on Tuesday, ending the day at $322.69 per share. With Elon Musk recently returning on Twitter and issuing an apology over his recent statements, there appears to be very little that can get in the way of the company performing better than expected this third quarter.
Investor's Corner
Tesla crushes Wall Street expectations, beats delivery estimates by over 15 percent
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) beat Wall Street expectations of 406,000 vehicles delivered in Q2 by reporting 480,126 deliveries for the three months ending in June.
Tesla reported it delivered 467,762 Model 3 and Model Y units, while 12,364 Model S, Model X, and Cybertrucks switched hands during the quarter. The Model S and Model X were officially sunset this past quarter and will no longer be part of the company’s Production & Delivery reports moving forward.
🚨 BREAKING: Tesla delivered 480,126 vehicles in Q2, ANNIHILATING Wall Street expectations of 406,000. Production was reported at 451,758.
Deliveries:
Model 3/Y: 467,762
Other Models: 12,364Production:
Model 3/Y: 442,936
Other Models: 8,822 https://t.co/TTHwQAsKt8 pic.twitter.com/7qI4Zj6FE5— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 2, 2026
The quarter is a pleasant surprise and a good rebound from Q1, when Tesla slightly missed the Wall Street consensus of 365,645 cars by reporting 358,023 deliveries for the first three motnhs of the year.
Energy storage deployments also provided some strength in Tesla’s delivery report, hitting 13.5 GWh for Q2. This is a particular division of Tesla’s business that has been overwhelmingly robust over the past few years, truly being a strong point of the company’s overall model.
For the year, Tesla analysts still predict deliveries to trend in the 1.69 million unit region, a modest 3 to 5 percent increase from the 1.64 million cars the company delivered last year. Tesla will likely return to more sequential and noticeable year-over-year growth as the Cybercab project starts to ramp up considerably in the next few years.
Tesla has some other potential catalysts to spur vehicle deliveries, too. Not only is it expecting Cybercab to truly start making a change in the next few years, but other vehicles could be entering the company’s lineup.
Tesla sends production Cybercab with no steering wheel, pedals to on-road testing
The slightly longer Model Y L has been a highly speculated release candidate in the U.S. It has already done incredibly well in China, and U.S. buyers have been wanting slightly more interior space than the Model Y. Now that the Model X is gone, it is more needed than ever.
Q2 highlights a pretty stable automotive division within Tesla, and no true concerns arise from these figures, especially considering it managed to beat expectations convincingly.
Investor's Corner
Tesla gets its latest short from Michael Burry: ‘Happy it jumped back to this level’
Tesla short seller Michael Burry, the subject of the film “The Big Short,” where he was portrayed by Steve Carell, has revealed he has opened a new bet against the stock.
In a new update to his Substack newsletter in a post titled “Trading Post June 30, 2026,” Burry revealed a new set of bets against Tesla, Caterpillar, NVIDIA, Applied Materials Inc., and the iShares Semiconductor ETF.
In regard to Tesla, Burry wrote:
“And finally I shorted Tesla at 416.22. Happy it jumped back to this level.”
This means Burry likely opened his new short position after the company’s recent rally on Wall Street, which saw Tesla shares sink in mid-May, only to recover to well over the $400 mark. Currently, shares trade at around $427.
The company saw a big Tuesday as shares climbed considerably, over 10 percent. The size of the Tesla short was not provided, nor did Burry give any information on the position’s structure, the number of shares, dollar value, or whether options were used in the short.
The Tesla and SpaceX merger everyone is talking about is quietly building
Over the years, Burry has been one of the more vocal critics of Tesla, calling its share price “media inflated,” and saying it was “ridiculously overvalued” as recently as December.
The company has largely transitioned away from being known as an automotive company and instead is much more widely regarded as an AI play, mostly due to its Full Self-Driving efforts, Optimus robot development, and data collection related to both.
This has not pulled those skeptics away from being vocal about their distaste for how Tesla is valued, but there’s no denying that the company is a global force in many things, including sustainable energy, automotive, and AI.
Wedbush Securities is initiating stock coverage on SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX), marking the first comments on the company since it went public several weeks ago. Wedbush and its analyst handling coverage, Dan Ives, are widely bullish on fellow Musk company Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA).
Ives wrote his first note initiating coverage of SpaceX shares on Wednesday with a $190 price target and an ‘Outperform’ rating. The firm believes the company is well positioned off of its IPO because of its wide array of projects, including AI compute power and infrastructure, connectivity projects, and launches.
“We view SpaceX as one of the most differentiated assets within the tech market with a strong footprint across its three core markets, with Starlink driving success with connectivity,” Ives wrote, “Starship launches leading to a demand flywheel and increasing deal flow for its Colossus clusters.”
Elon Musk called it Epic: The full story of SpaceX’s Starship Flight 12
Wedbush leans heavily on Starlink, which they say is the “profitability driver given the strength of its recurring revenue base of ~12 million subscribers as of June 5th.” Ives believes Starlink is still in the “early innings” of penetrating the global telecommunications and broadband market, as it only holds less than a 1 percent share. However, this number is sure to increase over time.
It also highlights the importance of Starship, which it says is an “essential layer” of SpaceX’s overall success. SpaceX developing and displaying the ability to reuse rockets is a major cost and reliability advantage “as it reduces the necessary hardware launch costs while generating a feedback loop for future flights to improve their launch flight rate without accelerating capex spend.”
Finally, SpaceX’s recent AI/Compute projects are also very elementary, Ives writes. It is worth mentioning Wedbush said its $190 price target is derived from a valuation forecast that sees the company yielding roughly $2.48 trillion of implied enterprise value.
There are also some factors that Wedbush did not take into account with its initial coverage. The firm wrote in the note:
“We note that there is optional value coming from Starship’s accelerating scale towards sub-$200/kg unit economics, orbital data centers, and enterprise AI monetization as these factors could drive meaningful upside but these face major hurdles, so we do not take that into account with our valuation.”
SpaceX shares are down just over 2 percent today, trading at around $167 at the time of publication.
Tesla brings Model Y L ‘Launch Series’ to the U.S. at $61,990
Tesla just told us twice that Model Y L is coming to the U.S.
