Investor's Corner
Elon Musk’s SEC settlement has cleared a path for Tesla’s record-breaking Q3 results
For Tesla, the past three months have been filled with incredible milestones and daunting challenges. Since producing 5,000 Model 3 in a week at the end of Q2, the electric car maker has steadily pushed itself out of “production hell” and well into Elon Musk’s self-dubbed “delivery logistics hell.” As the final hours of the third quarter trickle down, Tesla is now on full throttle as it attempts to end Q3 2018 on a historic note.
It has not been easy for Tesla, and particularly its CEO, Elon Musk. It is not difficult to see that Musk’s status as a rockstar CEO has served Tesla well, but at the same time, some of Musk’s personal mistakes have also negatively affected the electric car maker. Earlier this month, for example, Tesla stock took a steep tumble after news of two executive departures were augmented by Musk’s actions during a podcast, which included an instance when he seemingly smoked cannabis.
Perhaps Musk’s most notable gaffe, though, was a post last August stating that he was considering taking Tesla private at $420 per share, and that he had “funding secured.” The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ultimately filed a lawsuit against Musk over his “funding secured” tweet, claiming that the CEO knowingly misled investors. Musk settled with the SEC this weekend, agreeing to pay a total penalty of $40 million, comprised of a $20 million personal fine and another $20 million fine for Tesla. Part of the settlement also included Musk’s resignation as Chairman of Tesla’s Board of Directors, the appointment of two new independent directors, as well as the creation of a new committee tasked to “place additional controls and procedures to oversee Musk’s communications,” particularly on social media platforms such as Twitter.
While it is unfortunate that Elon Musk must relinquish his post as Chairman of Tesla’s Board of Directors, his settlement with the SEC could ultimately be seen as Musk’s decision to take a personal blow instead of compromising Tesla’s progress. Elon Musk, after all, reportedly rejected the SEC’s initial settlement, and by Friday, it seemed like he was preparing to battle it out with the government agency. This was one of the reasons why the SEC’s announcement on Saturday about Elon Musk’s settlement came as a welcome surprise for the Tesla community.
Ultimately, Elon Musk appears to have put Tesla before his own wishes to fight back against the SEC. And it wasn’t like he was cornered by the government agency either. Former SEC senior counsel Thomas Gorman, who is also a partner at the law firm Dorsey & Whitney, stated that the agency miscalculated when it filed a lawsuit against Musk. Gorman noted that while Elon Musk’s “funding secured” tweet last August was not smart from a business perspective, the SEC would have a very difficult time proving that the CEO actually committed fraud. Gorman further noted that the Saudi fund’s reported interest in Tesla’s take-private deal would likely be enough to make Musk’s statements legal.
“There’s a reasonable basis for what he said. I’m not questioning their motive. I just disagree with their judgment here,” Gorman said.
Ultimately, Elon Musk’s SEC settlement has now provided a clear path for Tesla to attain a record-breaking third quarter without any unnecessary drama. Elon Musk himself has noted that Tesla’s main challenge now is delivering as many vehicles to reservation holders as quickly as possible. Tesla, for its part, has begun adapting to the delivery challenges. Handovers reportedly go well into the night, home deliveries are being done to a number of reservation holders, and even owners of Tesla vehicles who are willing to volunteer their time have been tapped to help the company in its end-of-quarter push. Tesla’s production and delivery figures this Q3 would likely set new records, and with Elon Musk’s SEC lawsuit in the rearview mirror, there is very little that can come between the electric car maker and even more impressive milestones.
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.
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