Investor's Corner
Tesla remains volatile despite international Model 3 ramp, analysts’ optimistic outlook for 2019
Tesla stock (NASDAQ:TSLA) saw a steep, over 12% dive on Friday amidst news of a new round of layoffs and Elon Musk’s rather cautious tone about the company’s profitability in the fourth quarter and Q1 2019. As trading opened on Tuesday, TSLA stock seemed as volatile as ever, briefly showing some recovery after the opening bell before dipping into the red soon after.
In a way, the behavior of Tesla stock on Friday (and this Tuesday as of writing) was a bit strange. Not long after the company shared Elon Musk’s email explaining his reasons behind the 7% layoffs, after all, a number of Wall Street analysts covering the electric car maker expressed an optimistic view on Tesla, particularly as the company is now aiming to start breaching the international market with the Model 3, its most disruptive vehicle to date.
During a segment on CNBC’s Squawk Box, for one, Oppenheimer senior research analyst Colin Rusch, who has a $418 price target on the company, noted that Tesla’s recent job cuts were unsurprising and a likely sign of optimization.
“It’s not a huge surprise to see this. This looks to us like a mix of a proactive move in terms of cutting costs, … but also a bit of cleanup on the kind of massive push to get the Model 3 out this year. You never want to see a growth company cutting staff like this, but we’re not overly concerned,” Rusch said.
In a note to investors, Jefferies analyst Philippe Houchois, who has a $450 price target on TSLA, stated that the company’s reduced workforce suggests breakthroughs in productivity.
“Reducing headcount also suggests productivity gains. This is, in our view, (is) consistent with slower growth rates but mostly the scope to improve productivity and flow that we identified during our visit to the Fremont plant mid-November 2018,” the analyst said.
Baird analyst Ben Kallo, a longtime TSLA bull with a price target of $465 per share, noted that cost management would be crucial this 2019 as “Tesla transitions to its next phase of growth.” Wedbush analyst Dan Ives, who has a price target of $440 per share, stated that “Tesla will be able to emerge from the next 12 to 18 months” as an electric car maker that is stronger and more profitable.
Canaccord Genuity analyst Jed Dorsheimer, who has a $323 price target on TSLA, was more pronounced in his optimism for the company, stating that with the recent job cuts, “Tesla’s business is now set up for a more auspicious 2019.” Consumer Edge analyst Derek Glynn, who has a $350 price target on Tesla, noted that Elon Musk’s recent email suggested that “management is focused on achieving profitability each quarter after years of operating at significant losses.”
Former Tesla board member Steve Westly also took a similar stance, stating that the 7% job cuts are a sign that Elon Musk and Tesla’s management are taking the initiative to “right-size” the company and optimize it its more challenging, more ambitious future endeavors. This, according to Westly, gives the company a notable edge in the electric vehicle market.
“He is moving faster than anybody else, going global faster than anybody else, and today, Tesla is essentially the iPhone of the electric-car market. They’ve won the North American premium market race. The challenge now is to win the mass market, to go international. I think he is preparing the company to do that. I wouldn’t bet against him,” the former Tesla board member said.
That said, not everyone on Wall Street believes that Tesla’s recent job cuts bode well for the company. Citigroup analyst Itay Michaeli, who has a $284 price target on TSLA, mentioned in a note that the electric car maker’s lowered Q4 2018 guidance and 7% job cuts support the bear argument that the company’s stellar Q3 2018 results “weren’t sustainable.”
For now, Tesla is attempting to start deliveries of the Model 3 to two key international markets — Europe and China. Both territories present an important opportunity for the electric car maker, considering that Europe’s midsize sedan market is roughly twice as large as the United States.’ China’s electric car market, on the other hand, is the largest in the world. With Gigafactory 3 allowing Tesla to produce affordable variants of the Model 3 for the local market, the company’s electric sedan could prove to be a success in China.
As for Tesla’s upcoming competition this year, Oppenheimer analyst Colin Rusch notes that legacy automakers have some serious catching up to do.
“Let’s get realistic about what the competition looks like. I mean, people have been very excited about some of the vehicles coming out in 2018. One, those cars have been delayed. Two, the products haven’t been as exciting as people anticipated. We were just at the Detroit Auto Show this week, and we saw, you know, around ten EVs on the show floor, and none of them were particularly exciting,” the analyst said.
As of writing, Tesla stock is trading -1.04% at $299.12 per share.
Disclosure: I have no ownership in shares of TSLA and have no plans to initiate any positions within 72 hours.
Elon Musk
SpaceX (SPCX) IPO is live today at $135: Here’s exactly what you need to know
SpaceX priced its historic IPO at $135 per share today, raising a record $75 billion.
SpaceX officially priced its initial public offering at $135 per share, offering 555,555,555 shares of Class A common stock and raising $75 billion in what is the largest IPO in stock market history. Shares are set to begin trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market on Friday, June 12, under the ticker symbol SPCX. The previous record holder was Saudi Aramco’s 2019 offering at $29 billion, followed by Alibaba’s $22 billion offering in 2014.
At $135 per share and roughly 555.6 million shares, the implied valuation sits near $1.75 trillion, which would make SpaceX roughly the seventh largest company in the United States, just above Tesla’s current market cap. Regular investors can request shares at the IPO price through Robinhood, Fidelity, Charles Schwab, SoFi, and E*TRADE, though the deal is heavily oversubscribed and most retail allocations will be partial or unfilled. Once trading opens June 12, anyone with a brokerage account can buy SPCX on the open market.
SpaceX’s amended S-1 is sparking a major Tesla merger conversation
The valuation is anchored primarily by Starlink. Starlink crossed 10 million subscribers as of February 2026 and is adding 750,000 to 1.5 million new users per month, with the connectivity segment already posting a $1.19 billion profit last quarter. The offering also bundles in xAI following SpaceX’s all-stock merger earlier this year, adding Grok and the Colossus supercomputer to the investment thesis. As Teslarati reported, Starlink ended 2025 with $10 billion in revenue, a figure analysts project could reach $24 billion by end of 2026.
Wedbush analyst Dan Ives has been vocal in his support. “I think the time is right,” Ives said, adding that the offering expands the Elon Musk ecosystem rather than competing with Tesla. An average 12-month price target of $165 per share represents roughly 22% upside from the IPO price. Not everyone agrees – Motley Fool noted xAI is spending $1 billion per month playing catch-up to OpenAI and Anthropic.
Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 with a single stated purpose. “Elon founded SpaceX with a goal to change humanity, to make us a multi-planet species,” CFO Bret Johnsen said in the company’s retail roadshow video this week. Musk himself has been more direct: “We are building the systems and technologies necessary to provide global connectivity on Earth and beyond, to understand the true nature of the universe, and to extend the light of consciousness to the stars.”
Investor's Corner
Tesla unfolded its first European “folding Supercharger”
Tesla’s folding Supercharger just arrived in Europe and it changes how fast charging expands.
Tesla’s Folding Unit Supercharger has officially landed in Europe, with the company teasing a new installation in its effort for a broader rollout targeting major motorway rest stops across the European continent in Q3 2026. The arrival marks a notable shift in how Tesla is thinking about network expansion, moving from hardware performance alone to engineering the logistics chain itself.
While Tesla did not reveal the exact location for the new folding Supercharger in Europe, the photo shared on X heavily suggests that this maybe somewhere in Norway. Historically, whenever Tesla rolls out an entirely new infrastructure architecture in Europe, whether it was the original Supercharger stalls years ago or these brand-new modular V4 “Folding Units”, Norway is almost always the designated launch pad because of its unmatched EV adoption rate and supportive infrastructure
The Folding Unit, introduced in March 2026, is a factory pre-assembled V4 charging station built on an industrial hinge system mounted to a heavy-duty concrete base. The entire assembly arrives on site ready to unfold and connect. Tesla confirmed the units feature telescopic light poles specifically designed for easy transportation and fast on-site deployment, a detail that signals how carefully the logistics chain has been engineered alongside the hardware itself. The design allows 33% more stalls per delivery truck, cuts installation time roughly in half, and reduces overall deployment costs by more than 20% compared to traditional installations.
Tesla’s newest “Folding V4 Superchargers” are key to its most aggressive expansion yet
Tesla also noted telescopic light poles which provide benefits over traditional Supercharger installations that require fixed-height poles that are awkward to ship, slow to position on site, and often require separate crews and equipment to erect before charging hardware can even be staged. By engineering poles that compress for transit and extend on arrival, Tesla has removed one of the quieter bottlenecks in the physical deployment process. Every hour saved on a light pole installation is an hour redirected toward getting stalls energized. At scale, across dozens of new sites per quarter, those hours add up to a meaningful acceleration in how quickly a location goes from approved permit to serving its first customer.
Each Folding Unit pairs a single V4 power cabinet with eight charging posts. The V4 cabinet delivers up to 500 kW per stall for passenger vehicles and up to 1.2 MW for the Tesla Semi, supporting twice the stalls per cabinet at three times the power density of its predecessor. Longer cables make every new station immediately usable by non-Tesla vehicles, a priority as Tesla continues opening its network to Ford, GM, Rivian, Hyundai, Stellantis, and others.
As Teslarati reported when the Folding Unit was first unveiled, Tesla’s Gigafactory New York produced its final V3 Supercharger cabinet in March 2026 after more than seven years and 15,000 units, completing a full pivot to V4 production. The European arrival of the folding design is the next chapter in that transition.
Faster and cheaper deployment means Tesla can justify building in markets and corridors that were previously too expensive to serve, filling the coverage gaps that have slowed EV adoption outside major urban centers.
First Folding Unit Superchargers in Europe 🇪🇺 https://t.co/KNfYWJukkL pic.twitter.com/YR1udIpH1i
— Tesla Charging (@TeslaCharging) June 10, 2026
Tesla Full Self-Driving (Supervised) is currently listed as a Level 2 suite in terms of its passenger cars. As its Robotaxi platform continues to move quickly, it has been recognized as a Level 4 ride-sharing program by the State of Texas, as Tesla recently self-certified itself.
However, a Wall Street analyst is arguing that Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) has effectively achieved Level 4 autonomy in most conditions in all of its vehicles, drawing on personal experience and data released by the company.
Alex Potter of Piper Sandler said in a note to investors on Wednesday that “Tesla has solved the self-driving puzzle,” pointing to decisions to offer insurance discounts for FSD-enabled policies as a signal of confidence, which is backed up by stellar safety records compared to human driving.
Investing.com initially reported on Potter’s new note.
Additionally, Potter looks at the recent start of Cybercab production at Giga Texas as a potential indication that Tesla is ready to offer some level of unsupervised driving at least in the near future. The Cybercab has no steering wheel or pedals, completely eliminating the ability for human input.
He also sees Tesla’s allocation of “several hundred million USD (if not $1B+)” as confidence internally, seeing as it would be tough to set aside that amount of capital toward a project that the company does not see as relatively near-term.
Forward thinking, especially as Cybercab has no human controls, it would make sense that Tesla is at least close to self-driving. How close is another question.
Tesla has routinely teased that unsupervised FSD is close, but there are still a lot of things it feels as if the company has to roll out some more capability, including unsupervised parking features, known as “Banish,” better operation with regional self-driving performance, and other improvements.
That is not to say that Tesla FSD is super impressive already. It has already completed coast-to-coast drives across the United States and Canada, it routinely takes the stress out of driving for most people, and it has proven through Tesla Safety Reports that it is safer and involved in accidents less frequently than humans.
🚨 These are the first-ever FSD safety statistics out of the Netherlands, showing it was over 3.5x safer than human driving on Dutch roads.
The most recent numbers out of Tesla for North America show:
-Over 5.5 million miles between accidents for Teslas using FSD
-660k miles… https://t.co/XKlRzgSGEh pic.twitter.com/HX6kzh0ZKc— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) June 9, 2026
Even Potter believes it is capable, as he used it to go from Missoula, Montana, to Minneapolis, Minnesota, back in April.
“There’s no substitute for personal experience,” he wrote.
SpaceX (SPCX) IPO is live today at $135: Here’s exactly what you need to know
Tesla unfolded its first European “folding Supercharger”
