Investor's Corner
Tesla set for ‘massive trajectory’ for Q3 deliveries fueled by September demand
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- Wedbush analyst Dan Ives says September Tesla deliveries are on pace for “massive trajectory”
- Ives reiterates “Outperform” rating; holds $1,000 price target
- Tesla on pace for 230,000 deliveries, Ives predicts
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) is set for its biggest quarter in company history, according to Wedbush analyst and $TSLA bull Daniel Ives. Ives, who has periodically put his two cents regarding Tesla stock for several years, has spoken highly of the electric automaker, giving the company credit for being the leading force in the up-and-coming “green tidal wave” that will overtake the automotive sector as a whole. Tesla’s Q3 2021 is likely to be fed in part by September demand, which Ives believes is trending toward historic levels thanks to the automaker’s ability to avoid the long and drawn-out shortage of semiconductor chips.
Ives, who currently maintains an “Outperform” rating on $TSLA stock with a price target of $1,000, said that he is confident Tesla would exceed consensus expectations, which have Q3 deliveries set at 123,000 vehicles. Ives is more convinced of Tesla hitting 230,000 deliveries in Q3, mainly fueled by a “massive trajectory” of between 145,000 to 150,000 deliveries in September alone.
“The pace of EV deliveries in the US and China have been robust the last 4-6 weeks with an eye-popping growth trajectory heading into 4Q and 2022 for Musk & Co.,” Ives wrote in a note to investors.
September may be the saving grace for Tesla in Q3, especially as Elon Musk wrote in a leaked email to Tesla employees earlier this month that Q3 has the potential to be the company’s most remarkable. The CEO told workers that this week has the potential to be the “most intense delivery week ever,” as Tesla continues to trend toward record numbers once again. Tesla has not seen a decline in sales or deliveries of its vehicles Quarter-over-Quarter since Q1 2019.
The only reason Ives believes Tesla won’t have an even bigger quarter than he expects is due to the semiconductor chip shortage. While Tesla was able to avert most of the production delays and manufacturing stoppages with the creation of its own in-house microcontrollers, there was still a negative effect on the company’s production and delivery rate in July and August, he said in the note. Ives believes Tesla would have delivered around 80,000 to 90,000 vehicles for the first two months of the quarter. Overall, Ives said that the chip shortage may have decreased the overall production and delivery number by around 40,000 units.
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Tesla’s decision to export vehicles from Shanghai to Europe earlier this month to begin sales of the Model Y crossover on the continent could have also affected the automaker’s overall outlook for Q3. Ives believes the intense and complicated logistical process may have thrown a few wrenches into Tesla’s overall growth.
Even still, as Tesla navigated through the chip shortage and handled a new logistical process with relative ease, Ives is convinced that Tesla will still report its biggest quarter when Q3 wraps up tomorrow.
Analysts at other financial firms have already listed their estimates for Tesla’s third quarter. Many analysts have expectations for around 230,000 vehicles, including Alex Potter of Piper Sandler and Credit Suisse analyst Dan Levy. The analysts estimated 233,000 and between 225,000-230,000 deliveries for Q3, respectively.
Disclosure: Joey Klender is a TSLA Shareholder.
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.”
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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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