Investor's Corner
Tesla a ‘flagship holding’ despite Gigafactory unpredictability: Piper Sandler
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) is a “flagship holding” for Piper Sandler analyst Alexander Potter, who indicated the all-electric automaker’s stock is simply a must-have following the impressive delivery and production numbers the company reported late last week. Even with unpredictability and uncertainty regarding its upcoming Gigafactories, Tesla is still primed to be a big winner in the savvy EV sector moving forward, Potter said in a note.
Tesla reported 184,800 deliveries during Q1 2021, an impressive feat that peaked over Wall Street’s consensus for what was expected in the new year’s introductory quarter. Potter highlights this in a note to investors, where he indicated the Wall Street estimates were bested by Tesla’s real-life performance by over 10,000 units. Apparently avoiding bottlenecks that plagued other automakers with production delays, like the global semiconductor shortage, Tesla seemed to “sidestep” these issues in Q1, bringing together a quickly accelerating production push of its two mass-market vehicles to deliver impressive figures that no analyst could have predicted.
“Tesla apparently sidestepped the semiconductor shortages, battery bottlenecks, and shipping delays that plagued many other automakers during Q1,” Potter wrote, according to TheStreet. Still, the impressiveness of Tesla’s Q1 cannot completely be attributed to the company’s evident ability to defy all odds, even with supply shortages. The more impressive factor was the fact that Tesla was able to accomplish such a monumental quarter while navigating the absence of two of its vehicles: the Model S and the Model X, which are the subject of focus moving into Q2.
While the Model 3 and Model Y continue to gain popularity across the world, the Model S and Model X remain absent from Tesla’s current lineup of deliverable vehicles. Despite the company delivering a few thousand units of the flagship S and X vehicles thanks to inventory, the cars didn’t contribute very much. This is an expectation CEO Elon Musk highlighted several years ago during an Earnings Call, where he said the S and X were still produced for “sentimental reasons.”
Tesla’s Q1 ’21 Deliveries prove Elon Musk was right about the Model S and X in 2019
Despite the company’s inability to scrap its two luxury models, the Model S and Model X were the most recent focus of Tesla’s “refresh” project that spread across all four of its electric models over the past eight months. The Model 3 and Model Y underwent very minor cosmetic changes, while the Model S and Model X were basically overhauled and redesigned on the inside. Slight exterior changes were also spotted upon the vehicle’s first sightings at the Tesla Fremont Factory, but the interior design rehabilitation took center stage when Tesla released images during the Q4 2020 Earnings Call in late January.
Potter believes that S and X deliveries would have increased Tesla’s Q1 2021 delivery figures by around 15,000 units, giving Tesla a massive 200,000+ delivery quarter. The concerns from the Piper Sandler analyst do not have to do with the uncertainty regarding Model S and Model X deliveries to customers, but rather the unexpected delays that Gigafactory projects are experiencing. While Tesla has been extremely vocal regarding the first production dates of its upcoming manufacturing plants, Potter believes that uncertainty with Tesla’s other models could translate to some delays at Giga Texas and Giga Berlin, but it’s not making the analyst change his outlook on the electric automaker.
“We still think these new factories could cause margin pressure, delivery delays, and temporary multiple compression,” Potter said, “but we don’t want to overthink things: TSLA is a flagship holding, and we would own the shares.“
Tesla Giga Berlin is slated to begin production of the Model Y later this Summer, while Giga Texas timeframes remain uncertain at the present time. Tesla planned on Giga Texas being able to produce and deliver the first Cybertruck units by the end of 2021, but Musk recently told Joe Rogan that the company will accomplish this if they’re lucky.
“If we get lucky, we’ll be able to do a few deliveries toward the end of this year, but I expect volume production to be in 2022,” Musk said.
Alex Potter holds an average return of 34.2% and a nearly 5-star rating. He is ranked #328 out of over 7,400 analysts on TipRanks.com.
Disclosure: Joey Klender is a TSLA Shareholder.
Tesla short sellers won big following the company’s massive fall on Wall Street after it reported subpar Earnings on Wednesday.
Tesla short sellers collected about $4.12 billion in single-day profits on Thursday, according to Bloomberg. Shares fell as much as 15 percent during Thursday’s session. It closed as one of the worst days for Tesla on Wall Street in the past three years.
Investors sold off the stock after Tesla said it would aggressively direct its spending toward AI and its Optimus robot project. The company had record revenues, which were driven by one of the strongest quarters in terms of vehicle deliveries in company history.
However, it missed EPS estimates by reporting just $0.33, a far cry from the $0.53 analysts expected.
S3 Partners reported that about 3 percent of Tesla’s outstanding stock is sold short. Managing Director at S3, Ihor Dusaniwsky, provided the short seller’s potential profit, as well as another figure: shorts have likely had paper gains of $8.92 billion this year, as Tesla shares are down 30 percent in 2026.
Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results: miss on EPS, beat on revenue
Tesla has burned short sellers many times in the past, but the company’s latest Earnings Call was a chance for those skeptics to taste some payback. Although the company gave some very transparent information regarding future projects, the rollout of Robotaxi, Optimus, and Semi, many investors took their profits on Thursday.
Notable short sellers like Michael Burry have been transparent about their skepticism around Tesla shares. Burry just revealed three weeks ago that he had opened up a new short on the stock, stating he shorted Tesla shares at $416.22. “Happy it jumped back to this level,” he said in a blog post.
At the time of publication, Tesla shares were down about 3 percent and the stock was trading at $309.92.
Tesla stock (NASDAQ: TSLA) endured one of its sharpest single-day declines in years on July 23, tumbling approximately 14.5 percent and closing near $320 after opening the session around $374. The drop erased more than $140 billion in market value amid heavy trading volume and left the shares at multi-week lows.
The sell-off followed the company’s second-quarter 2026 results, released the previous evening. Tesla reported record revenue of $28.2 billion, up 26 percent year over year, driven by a Q2-record 480,126 vehicle deliveries. Energy storage deployments also rose strongly.
Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results: miss on EPS, beat on revenue
Yet profitability disappointed sharply. Operating income fell 57 percent to $398 million, compressing the operating margin to just 1.4 percent. Non-GAAP earnings per share came in at $0.33, well below the roughly $0.53 analysts had expected. Free cash flow turned negative by $1.1 billion as capital expenditures surged 142 percent to $5.8 billion, largely tied to accelerated spending on artificial intelligence, robotics, and autonomous systems.
The losses on capex were expected, as Tesla said it would be spending heavily in 2026.
Investors also reacted to lingering uncertainty surrounding key product timelines. During the Earnings Call, management reiterated ambitions for Robotaxi deployment and the Optimus humanoid robot, but offered limited new concrete milestones, renewing questions about execution pace that have long accompanied Tesla’s ambitious roadmap.
The magnitude of the decline places it among Tesla’s more severe one-day percentage losses since its 2010 initial public offering. Historically, the two largest single-day drops (split-adjusted) remain September 8, 2020, when shares fell 21.1 percent amid broader market volatility and valuation concerns, and January 13, 2012, with a 19.3 percent plunge during the company’s early growth struggles.
Other notable declines include an 18.6 percent drop on March 16, 2020, at the onset of pandemic-related market turmoil. Thursday’s move ranks roughly ninth on the all-time list but stands out as the steepest in more than a year.
Despite the short-term pain, Tesla’s long-term trajectory has repeatedly recovered from such volatility. The latest results underscore both the strength of its core automotive and energy businesses and the near-term costs of heavy investment in next-generation technologies.
In a striking revelation that underscores the lucrative crossover between Big Tech and space exploration, Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company, disclosed a massive $94.1 billion equity stake in SpaceX following the rocket company’s blockbuster initial public offering earlier this year.
The disclosure came in Alphabet’s quarterly filing, marking the first time the long-held private investment has been publicly valued at market prices. Google was an early backer, investing alongside Fidelity in 2015 with roughly $500-900 million at a time when SpaceX was valued around $12 billion.
That bet has delivered extraordinary returns, roughly a hundredfold, transforming a strategic play on satellite internet and launch capabilities into one of Alphabet’s largest assets.
Google, $GOOGL, has said they hold $94 billion in SpaceX, $SPCX, shares after IPO.
— unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) July 23, 2026
Of the total holding, approximately $80 billion remains subject to short-term post-IPO lockup restrictions, preventing near-term sales. An additional $14.1 billion faces longer-term restrictions, extending into the third quarter of 2027. This structure limits immediate liquidity but protects against market volatility as SpaceX transitions into public trading.
The SpaceX position contributed significantly to gains in Alphabet’s broader investment portfolio, which also includes a major stake in AI leader Anthropic. Combined, these holdings helped drive nearly $100 billion in investment gains during the second quarter, providing a substantial boost to net income amid ongoing AI spending pressures.
Analysts view the disclosure as validation of Alphabet’s venture strategy beyond its core search and cloud businesses. The investment aligns with deeper ties, including reported multi-billion-dollar deals for AI computing capacity on SpaceX infrastructure. As SpaceX advances Starship flights, Starlink expansion, and ambitious Mars goals under Elon Musk, Google’s stake positions it to benefit from the commercialization of space.
For Alphabet, the windfall highlights how patient, forward-looking bets in transformative sectors can yield outsized rewards. While lockups temper short-term impact, the holding cements SpaceX as a cornerstone of Alphabet’s diversified portfolio in an era where aerospace, AI, and connectivity increasingly intersect. Investors will watch closely as restrictions lift and SpaceX’s public performance unfolds.
Tesla short sellers win big after shares fall after earnings
Tesla door handle saga gets its latest chapter and a big change is coming
