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 President to gift Trump Accounts her SpaceX stock
Gwynne Shotwell’s 2 million SpaceX shares are headed to children’s Trump Accounts starting this December.
SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said Friday that more than 2 million SpaceX shares belonging to her and her husband, Robert, will be distributed to children’s Trump Accounts in December, turning a pledge she made over the summer into an actual transfer. “Robert and I are thrilled that our gift of over 2 million shares of SpaceX stock will be distributed to children’s Trump accounts in December!” Shotwell wrote on X, adding that the shares are “transferring to escrow as we speak.”
The first round goes to children aged 11 to 17 who live in ZIP codes where the median family income is $57,000 or less, along with kids in ZIP codes with too few residents for the Census to report that figure. Shotwell said those families should receive a notice by Monday, Reuters reported.
A second gift is expected to be finalized in the next few weeks. That round will cover eligible children in military families serving overseas, children in foster care, and more kids in Texas counties near the Shotwells’ home where median family income is $90,000 or less. Elon Musk replied to the announcement with “Cool” and a heart emoji.
Shotwell first announced the donation on July 6, less than a month after SpaceX priced its record IPO at $135 per share on the Nasdaq. IPO filings showed Shotwell owned about 12.6 million SpaceX shares, Quartz reported at the time, which makes the gift roughly one sixth of her stake. At the roughly $146 per share used to value Musk’s own pledge earlier this month, 2 million shares are worth about $290 million.
How the stock would actually reach the accounts had been an open question since July. Treasury guidance acknowledged that stock donations could flow into Trump Accounts, but it did not explain the mechanics for a program whose contributions default into an S&P 500 index fund. Shotwell thanked the Treasury, the IRS, the Dell Foundation, Greater Horizons, Invest America and the law firms Morgan Lewis and Gibson Dunn for “working over the past few months to make this happen.”
The transfer also works as a dry run for a far larger gift. On October 19, Musk said he would give one of his SpaceX shares to every kid in America next year and called it “the first of many.” With roughly 72 million children in the country, that pledge is worth about $10.5 billion. President Donald Trump thanked Musk the same day and said the shares would go through Trump Accounts, though neither SpaceX nor the Treasury has published how or when that distribution will happen.
Shotwell’s recipients also fill a gap in the program itself. Trump Accounts launched on July 4, and the $1,000 Treasury deposit only goes to babies born between 2025 and 2028. Teenagers aged 11 to 17 receive no government seed money, so for many of the families getting a notice on Monday, SpaceX stock will be the first asset in the account. The accounts convert into retirement accounts when the child turns 18.
Investor's Corner
Tesla has a Cybercab problem nobody saw coming
Tesla’s Cybercab line now builds robotaxis faster than Tesla can deploy them, Lars Moravy says.
Tesla’s Cybercab line in Texas can now build the two seat robotaxi faster than the company can put it into service, according to Lars Moravy, Tesla’s Vice President of Vehicle Engineering. “We don’t run every day because the line can run so fast. It’s currently outpacing our deployments,” Moravy said in a new Cybercab deep dive from Munro Live. “So, it’s a bit of a race right now. Who’s going to go faster? Right now the manufacturing line’s ahead.”
Tesla’s official Robotaxi account shared a Cybercab analysis video on X on Monday, calling it a “Cybercab engineering deep dive.” Moravy’s comments go further than what he told analysts on the Q3 earnings call last week, when he said the Cybercab line’s listed capacity of more than 125,000 units a year undersells what it can actually run.
The tour shows where that speed comes from. Tesla’s unboxed process splits the Cybercab into front, rear, side and center modules that are built and tested on their own before they meet on a short final line. That final line has just 25 fully automated stations, which Tesla’s team estimated is a fifth to a tenth of what a Model Y needs. The full line is about 78% automated, the framing line is already at 100%, and the layout uses roughly 50% less floor space per vehicle. The stated goal is “100% automation in 10 second cycle time,” or one finished Cybercab every 10 seconds.
Tesla also deleted the paint shop. Only the side modules are coated, and the exterior panels get their color inside the molding machine. Engineers said the car is designed to run at least 500,000 miles, which matters for a vehicle that will spend most of its day carrying riders.
The battery got the same treatment. The Cybercab uses an 88S6P pack of 4680 cells in a steel enclosure, a first for Tesla, with each module potted separately so a single failed module can be swapped instead of the whole pack. Wireless battery management boards replace a wiring harness, and new contactors are fast enough to drop the pyro fuse entirely. Tesla’s battery director graded the pack an A minus, compared with a D for the Model Y structural pack and a B minus for Cybertruck. Up front, the drive unit runs an 11:1 gear ratio versus roughly 9:1 on most Teslas, since the Cybercab does not need a high top speed.
Cybercab engineering deep dive — Robotaxi (@robotaxi) October 26, 2026
The deployment side is now the bottleneck Moravy described. Tesla had more than 50 Cybercabs working the Formula 1 weekend in Austin, and Texas records show 463 Cybercabs registered. Tesla said on its earnings call that Cybercab service will launch in Dallas next month, and Moravy said the company is aiming to get Cybercabs to customers by the end of 2026. Every unit built so far has gone into Tesla’s own fleet since the line moved into volume production in April.
Munro Live also asked when it could get a Cybercab to tear down. Tesla’s answer: “Not yet.”
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) reported its earnings for the third quarter of 2026, marking a reasonable performance on the various financial metrics. Tesla still plans to hold a call that will field investor questions at 5:30 p.m. ET, 4:30 p.m. CT.
Here’s where Earnings came in:
- Total Revenues: $28.046 reported vs. $28.34B expected
- Non-GAAP EPS: $0.48 reported vs. $0.45 expected
- Operating Margin: 2.6 % reported vs. 2.5% expected
- Operating Income: $718M reported vs. $721M expected
- Free Cash Flow: $1.531B reported vs. ~-$4.51B expected
Tesla $TSLA Earnings Results:
Revenues: $28.046B
Non-GAAP EPS: $0.48
Operating Margin: 2.6%
Operating Income: $718M
FCF: $1.531B— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) October 21, 2026
Major Takeaways
Full Self-Driving (Supervised)
“FSD (Supervised)⁴ attach rate continued to grow, reaching over 75% of new vehicle deliveries in North America – our most mature market – a nearly twenty percentage point sequential increase. We believe that FSD is driving demand in markets where it is available, and we continue to work with regulators to get it approved in other markets.”
Tesla Semi
“We began volume production of Tesla Semi, our Class 8 heavy-duty truck. The top variant can go 500 miles at full 82,000 lbs gross combination weight while achieving an efficiency of 1.7 kWh/mile. That efficiency allows the Tesla Semi to use a third of the energy used by a comparable diesel truck to haul the same payload. In a transportation market where energy is one of the largest components of total cost per mile, this will provide a meaningful advantage to Tesla Semi operators.”
SI Compute
“We plan to reach 400 MW of SI training compute by the end of the year, supporting the development of both vehicle and humanoid robot autonomy software. Additionally, we continued construction for the Austin Fab, where we plan to start commissioning equipment in 2027.”
Robotaxi
“We began deployment of Cybercab into our Robotaxi fleet in Austin. We reached nearly two million cumulative unsupervised miles for our Robotaxi service as of the end of the quarter. Operating hours in Austin are now 6am to midnight, and we expect to reduce wait times via increased fleet supply and improvement of Robotaxi orchestration algorithms. Grok is available in Cybercab with access to Grok Bot and Connectors, which allows users to manage their inbox, calendars, files, chats and tasks – all hands free via voice command – making Cybercab a mode of transport, a productivity space and, with our entertainment options, a second living room.”
Interested in ordering a Tesla? Use my referral code for three free months of Full Self-Driving (Supervised) here.
SpaceX President to gift Trump Accounts her SpaceX stock
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