Investor's Corner
Tesla (TSLA) starts recovering amid Outperform rating, $430 price target from Wall St firm
While Tesla stock (NASDAQ:TSLA) ended Monday’s trading at a nearly 18-month low, the electric car maker has nonetheless received an optimistic outlook from Macquarie Capital Inc. In a recently published note, the Wall Street firm gave the company an Outperform rating and a $430 price target, citing the electric car maker’s unique position to “lead in ecosystem platforms.” Â
Macquarie analyst Maynard Um wrote in a recent note that in the long term, Tesla would likely enjoy an edge against competitors due to the strength and integration of its vehicle hardware and software systems. The analyst pointed out that the auto industry is currently “on the precipice of a multi-decade transformation driven by disruptive innovation and technology.” Thus, companies focused on highly disruptive ecosystem platforms such as Tesla would likely be successful. Um also took a particular focus on Tesla’s real-world Autopilot data as pivotal in establishing the company’s place in the emerging autonomous driving industry.
The Macquarie analyst noted that in the short-term, he sees enough levers to fund Tesla’s debt maturity events, particularly if the company’s stock reaches $360 per share by 3/1/2019. Um did note, though, that it would be beneficial for Tesla to raise equity, as it would further strengthen the company’s longer-term outlook and provide a cushion for any unexpected events or periods of “economic softening.” The analyst also stated that there are two key demand drivers which provide comfort around Tesla’s sales.
“Our thesis is also predicated on TSLA having enough levels to get over the debt maturity hump including cash flow from ZEV credit (estimate potential for $500-$600 million in 2H 18) & Model 3 sales, access to $1.2 billion unused debt commitment, potential for credit amendments, et al. We see two demand drivers into year-end (key to achieving profits) that provide comfort around sales: 1) pent-up demand before the end of lifetime Supercharging on 9/18, and 2) pent-up demand before year-end when US subsidies diminish. TSLA appears on track for production targets & should be able to achieve profitability in 2H.”
The analyst concluded that ultimately, Macquarie’s Outperform rating and $430 price target for Tesla is driven by five primary factors – the electric car maker’s accelerating vehicle growth, the company’s “unique” potential among OEMs, its technology integration and differentiation, the expansion of its energy storage business, and its opportunity to lead in the autonomous driving field. Â
Amidst the release of the Macquarie analyst’s recent note, TSLA stock started showing some recovery, trading up 3.36% at $258.98 per share when markets opened on Tuesday.
The steep plunge of Tesla stock over the past week comes amidst the company’s improving fundamentals and even more accolades for its latest vehicle, the Model 3. Apart from showing impressive Q3 vehicle delivery and production results, Tesla has also been exhibiting signs that its ramp for the Model 3 ramp is getting even better. Since October began, for example, Tesla has registered more than 17,000 new Model 3 VINs, with the majority of the filings corresponding to Dual Motor vehicles. This Sunday, Tesla also shared an update stating that the NHTSA has found the Model 3 to be the car with the “lowest probability of injury” among the vehicles the agency has tested so far. Immediately following the Model 3 was Tesla’s two other cars – the Model S and the Model X.
Tesla’s vehicle assembly line in Fremont, CA.
Admittedly, some of the stock’s volatility could be attributed to Elon Musk’s behavior on Twitter last Thursday. Less than a week after agreeing to a settlement with the SEC regarding the commission’s lawsuit over his “funding secured” tweet last August, Musk opted to troll the SEC on Twitter. Tesla was down 4.4% on Thursday, but after Musk’s tweets, TSLA fell by 2% more. Friday and this past Monday were equally unkind to Tesla stock.
Fellow billionaire and iconic philanthropist Richard Branson recently expressed his thoughts on what Elon Musk could do to reduce his stress in Tesla. While speaking to CNBC, Branson noted that it would be best if Musk, a hands-on leader who has a tendency to overdo his work, learns the art of delegation.
“I think he maybe needs to learn the art of delegation. It’s important that he’s got to find time for himself, he’s got to find time for his health, and for his family. He’s a wonderfully creative person, but he shouldn’t be getting very little sleep. He should find a fantastic team of people around him and still jump in on all the major issues. And I think the reason that I have such an enjoyable life – a long life – has been finding wonderful people to run our companies on the key issues I can then get involved. So if I was to sit down with him – I have talked to him about it – but I think learning the art of delegation better would be his one flaw,” Branson said.
As of writing, Tesla shares are trading up 5.24% at $263.69 per share.
Disclosure: I have no ownership in shares of TSLA and have no plans to initiate any positions within 72 hours.
Investor's Corner
SpaceX reveals how its 1 Million AI satellite network will work and prevent space collisions
SpaceX reveals plans for one million Starmind AI satellites and calls out operators hiding maneuvers.
SpaceX has put the largest satellite count it has ever published into writing, and it says that plan only works if every other operator in orbit starts sharing what it knows.
In a new Space Safety page highlighted Tuesday morning by Sawyer Merritt on X, SpaceX said it “plans to operate up to 100,000 Starlink satellites and up to 1 million Starmind AI satellites to meet the growing demand for broadband and supercompute.” Starlink has a little over 11,000 satellites in orbit today, so the target alone implies roughly a ninefold expansion of the broadband network.
Starmind is SpaceX’s orbital AI compute constellation. Elon Musk confirmed the Starmind name in June after an xAI trademark filing surfaced, and in August SpaceX said it was working with Nvidia on the compute payload. The FCC accepted the filing for up to one million satellites back in February.
FCC accepts SpaceX filing for 1 million orbital data center plan
SpaceX also released a new render of what a full Starmind constellation could look like. Alongside it, SpaceX VP Michael Nicolls explained why the satellites will not operate on their own. “We need to operate clusters of satellites in tight formation to get enough coherent compute to run AI models efficiently,” Nicolls said. “A cluster will be 10-ish satellites connected with 10 terabits or so of bandwidth between them, and interconnected to the broader constellation.”
That is the most specific detail SpaceX has given on how Starmind will be built. Instead of a million independent servers, the network would work as tightly packed groups of about 10 satellites acting as one compute unit, with Starlink’s laser links carrying results back to Earth.
There is a bright and exciting future for humanity ahead – and space is fundamental to that future.
To achieve this, space safety must be done right. We encourage every operator to not only share ephemeris data proactively the same way Starlink already does, but to also adopt the high standards of space safety that SpaceX and Starlink use every day → https://t.co/QizAkQZvEm
— Starlink (@Starlink) October 6, 2026
Packing satellites that close together, at that scale, makes collision avoidance the central problem, and most of the Space Safety page is aimed at other operators. SpaceX said Starlink encountered collision risks with about 650 unique maneuvering third party satellites in 2026, and only about half of them shared data. Over six months, Starlink recorded roughly 164,000 more collision risks where the closest approach came within four hours of an unannounced maneuver.
Some operators keep maneuver plans private over proprietary concerns, while others cannot get government permission to share them. SpaceX called those policies “counterproductive,” saying they “largely only serve to create preventable collision risk between satellites.” Starlink is also offering a free ephemeris sharing and screening platform that returns risk results within a minute, backed by its Stargaze network of 30,000 optical sensors.
The push comes as the Starmind application draws opposition from astronomers and environmental groups. In a September filing with the FCC, SpaceX said each Starmind satellite could weigh up to 4,000 kg, nearly seven times the mass of a Starlink V2 Mini. Musk has brushed off crowding concerns before, telling viewers in June that “space is enormous” and that SpaceX already knows how to run very large constellations safely.
SpaceX’s Starmind page says its Gigasat factory in Bastrop, Texas, is designed to produce AI satellites at scale, with deployment of thousands of units starting as soon as late 2027.
Investor's Corner
Tesla deliveries best Wall Street guesses alongside second-best energy quarter
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) reported strong delivery figures that beat Wall Street guesses, and they were revealed alongside the company’s second-best quarter in terms of energy deployments ever.
Tesla announced this morning that it delivered 486,532 cars in Q3, while producing 464,391, exceeding analyst consensus, which sat around 462,000 units.
Meanwhile, Tesla reported 13.7 GWh of energy storage deployed for the quarter. That’s the second-best quarter Tesla has ever reported on that side of things.
🚨 Tesla delivered 486,532 vehicles in Q3, beating expectations at 464,391.
Big Q from the Tesla team, also 13.7 GWh of energy was deployed. pic.twitter.com/olioLWgG7a
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) October 2, 2026
Vehicle Deliveries
Deliveries were strong, and it was another quarter when Tesla had the opportunity to outshine the Wall Street pundits who are quick to criticize and slow to give credit. Tesla saw a slight decrease in deliveries compared to Q3 2025, but Tesla still had the $7,500 EV Tax Credit to use to help incentivize consumers to pick an EV.
A small decrease of 2.1 percent is pretty telling because it shows Tesla does not need massive federal credits to convince consumers to purchase its vehicles.
It was also the company’s third-best performance all-time in terms of deliveries, trailing that of Q3 2025 with 497,099 deliveries and Q4 2024, when the company handed over 495,570 cars.
We reported several days ago that Tesla Showrooms across the United States were completely bare of inventory or unclaimed units. Many locations also removed Demo Drive units, which had been bought by customers looking to take delivery sooner.
Tesla showrooms picked clean ahead of Q3 end as demand looks strong
Energy Generation
Tesla’s Energy Generation performance in Q3 was also very strong, as the company deployed 13.7 GWh of energy storage over the past three months. The only quarter when Tesla reported stronger energy deployment figures was Q4 2025, when 14.2 GWh of energy storage was deployed.
Tesla’s Q3 performance in energy generation has continued to grow each quarter, with the company increasing its deployments by ten-fold since Q3 2021, when just 1.3 GWh was deployed.
It is also nearly double what it was in Q3 2024, when the company reported 6.9 GWh. This is one of Tesla’s quickest-growing divisions, and it flies under the radar with fans and analysts, as many are focused on self-driving or the vehicles themselves.
Tesla Stock
Shares rose 5.07 percent to $372.06 at just after 10 a.m. on the East Coast. This is a rarity for Tesla after a strong delivery report, as positive news usually brings the stock down. Many quarters with extremely robust delivery reports have not been as kind to the Teslanaires of the world.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk and Trump are closer than ever, and Tesla could be the big winner
Elon Musk sat beside Trump as AI leaders signed a voluntary White House safety accord.
Elon Musk had the seat right next to President Donald Trump on Tuesday as the White House hosted the leaders of America’s biggest artificial intelligence companies for a lunch that ended with a voluntary industry accord on AI safety.
A seating chart Trump posted on Truth Social placed Musk at the president’s left in the East Room, with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on his right, according to an Associated Press reporter. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI President Greg Brockman, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Google’s Sundar Pichai, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos also attended, along with Vice President JD Vance and House Speaker Mike Johnson.
🚨 Elon Musk is currently speaking to the media alongside President Trump after a meeting with AI Leaders in Washington today
Trump says AI is now being called “Super Intelligence” or SI pic.twitter.com/woJJqUVP9B
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) September 29, 2026
After the lunch, Trump told reporters outside the West Wing that the executives had signed “The White House Accord on Superintelligence: A Joint Commitment on Frontier SI Responsibilities.” Johnson described it as a voluntary statement of principles built on “robust internal controls and layers of internal and external review,” while Zuckerberg said company boards would independently review reports from outside auditors. Trump called the document “morally binding,” said he would name a new AI czar within days, and signed an executive order formally renaming artificial intelligence “super intelligence,” CNBC reported.
Musk was not in the room for Tesla alone. Since SpaceX absorbed xAI, he runs the company behind Grok and one of the largest AI training operations anywhere. On September 25, he said another 220,000 Nvidia GB300 chips would come online at Colossus 2 within a week, with more expected in November and December.
“I think it is worth highlighting the positive benefits of A.I. … S.I., pardon me.”
“Thank you.”@elonmusk catches his own slip after calling the technology “A.I.” while speaking alongside President Trump and other tech leaders, quickly correcting himself to “super… pic.twitter.com/fH7CFileNb
— Fox News (@FoxNews) September 29, 2026
SpaceX confirms third massive compute deal at Colossus data center
Musk also used the trip to restate his energy ambitions. “SpaceX is aiming together with Tesla to do 200 gigawatts of solar production per year,” he said at an event in Washington. It is the same combined target he laid out that feeds directly into Terafab, the Tesla and SpaceX chip venture that will need enormous amounts of power.
The showing between Musk and Trump has come a long way, since the two had the very public split in mid 2025 after Musk opposed the “Big Beautiful Bill” and left DOGE. They reconciled at Charlie Kirk’s memorial that September, and Trump later called their relationship “good”. Since then, Musk has joined Trump’s China delegation in May and attended last week’s White House state dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping.
For Tesla, that access to government official could pay dividends. As Teslarati noted in January, federal autonomy rules, NHTSA oversight and a single national standard for driverless vehicles all run through an administration Musk can more easily reach directly as Tesla works to scale Robotaxi and Cybercab beyond Texas.