Investor's Corner
Tesla (TSLA) shows recovery as Musk seemingly confirms positive August sales
Tesla shares (NASDAQ:TSLA) are showing some recovery after taking a tumble yesterday amidst Elon Musk’s apparent support of a positive report estimating the sales figures of the Model 3, S, and X in August 2018, as well as an announcement of new orders for the Tesla Semi.
Musk’s Twitter update was posted as a retweet of sales estimates published by electric vehicle-themed website InsideEVs, which posted its monthly US EV sales scorecards for August. The website estimates that Tesla’s entire line of vehicles dominated the country’s electric car sales during the month, with the Model 3 being 1st, the Model S being 2nd, and the Model X being the 3rd best-selling EV in the US.
Tesla 1st, 2nd & 3rd in August sales https://t.co/npDKC9QEpP
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 6, 2018
While InsideEVs‘ scorecards do not include the official August sales figures from Tesla and other vehicles like the Chevy Bolt EV, the publication’s estimates appear to have been approved by Musk in his tweet. This seems to have positively affected investor sentiment, as the company’s shares recovered as much as 2.05% in Thursday’s pre-market.
Tesla might have hit a breakthrough with Model 3 production after the end of Q2 2018, but the company is still only around halfway through its target of ultimately manufacturing 10,000 Model 3 per week. Evercore ISI analysts who visited the Fremont factory last month noted that Tesla would likely be able to ramp to 7,000-8,000 Model 3 per week with minimal CapEx, and with the $35,000 base Model 3 still on the horizon, it appears that Tesla’s electric sedan is just getting started in its disruption of the passenger car market.
Apart from the positive August sales estimates for the Model 3, S, and X, Tesla also received a new set of orders for a vehicle that is still waiting for release. In an update on Thursday, Walmart Inc’s Canadian unit announced that it would be buying an additional 30 units of the Tesla Semi as part of its initiative to launch an emissions-free fleet by 2028. The 20 new orders for the Tesla Semi are set to be added to the 5 trucks Walmart ordered for its US fleet and the first 10 it ordered for its Canadian unit back in November. Walmart Canada noted that it is planning to utilize 20 Tesla Semis to support its fleet base in Mississauga, Ontario. The remaining 20 left for the Canadian fleet will be moved to Surrey, British Columbia.
The Tesla Semi is expected to begin production sometime in 2019, and Tesla is already on full throttle testing the vehicle on America’s roads. The Semi’s hand-built, carbon-fiber prototype has been making the rounds in several states lately, and it even visited some of the companies that have placed reservations for the vehicle, such as UPS, Ruan Transportation Management Systems, and J.B. Hunt.
The Tesla Model 3 is already disrupting the US’ passenger car market. GoodCarBadCar, an auto sales tracking website, ranked the electric sedan as the country’s 5th best-selling passenger car in August, up two places from its rank last July. The Model 3 is also the only electric vehicle that made it to GCBC‘s overall Top 20 best-selling vehicles list for the past month, which includes trucks like the Ford F-150 and SUVs like the Honda CR-V.
In the same way that the Model 3 is disrupting the passenger car segment, the Tesla Semi also has the potential to disrupt the US’ trucking industry. The trucking market is vast, handling the transportation of 71% of food, retail goods, construction supplies, and other cargo delivered every day — and it is still growing. The American Trucking Associations’ American Trucking Trends 2018 report, for one, revealed that the US trucking market generated $700.3 billion in economic activity in 2017, 3.5% more compared to 2016 when the trucking industry generated $676.6 billion. If Tesla can tap into this market with the Semi, the all-electric truck could prove to be a very lucrative vehicle for the company.
As of writing, Tesla shares are up 3.36% at $290.16 per share.
Disclosure: I have no ownership in shares of TSLA and have no plans to initiate any positions within 72 hours.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) reported its earnings for the first quarter of 2026 on Wednesday afternoon. Here’s what the company reported compared to what Wall Street analysts expected.
The earnings results come after Tesla reported a miss on vehicle deliveries for the first quarter, delivering 358,023 vehicles and building 408,386 cars during the three-month span.
As Tesla transitions more toward AI and sees itself as less of a car company, expectations for deliveries will begin to become less of a central point in the consensus of how the quarter is perceived.
Nevertheless, Tesla is leaning on its strong foundation as a car company to carry forward its AI ambitions. The first quarter is a good ground layer for the rest of the year.
Tesla Q1 2026 Earnings Results
Tesla’s Earnings Results are as follows:
- Non-GAAP EPS – $0.41 Reported vs. $0.36 Expected
- Revenues – $22.387 billion vs. $22.35 billion Expected
- Free Cash Flow – $1.444 billion
- Profit – $4.72 billion
Tesla beat analyst expectations, so it will be interesting to see how the stock responds. IN the past, we’ve seen Tesla beat analyst expectations considerably, followed by a sharp drop in stock price.
On the same token, we’ve seen Tesla miss and the stock price go up the following trading session.
Tesla will hold its Q1 2026 Earnings Call in about 90 minutes at 5:30 p.m. on the East Coast. Remarks will be made by CEO Elon Musk and other executives, who will shed some light on the investor questions that we covered earlier this week.
You can stream it below. Additionally, we will be doing our Live Blog on X and Facebook.
Q1 2026 Earnings Call at 4:30pm CT https://t.co/pkYIaGJ32y
— Tesla (@Tesla) April 22, 2026
Elon Musk
Tesla Earnings: financial expectations and what we should to hear about
In terms of discussions, Tesla earnings calls are usually a great time to get some clarification on the company’s outlook for its current and future projects.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) will report its earnings for the first quarter of 2026 this evening after the market closes, and analysts have already put out their expectations from a financial standpoint for the company’s first three months of the year.
Additionally, there will be plenty of things that will be discussed, including the recent expansion of the Robotaxi program, the Roadster unveiling, and Full Self-Driving (Supervised) approvals across the globe.
Financial Expectations
Wall Street consensus expectations put Tesla’s Earnings Per Share (EPS) at $0.36, while revenues are expected to come in around $22.35 billion.
This would compare to an EPS of $0.27 and $19.34 billion compared to Tesla’s Q1 2025. Last quarter, EPS came in at $0.50 on $29.4 billion of revenue.
Tesla beat analyst expectations last quarter, but the next trading day, the stock fell nearly 3.5 percent. We never quite can gauge how the market will respond to Tesla’s earnings; we’ve seen shares rise on a miss and fall on a beat.
It really goes on the news, and investor consensus, it seems.
What to Expect
In terms of discussions, Tesla earnings calls are usually a great time to get some clarification on the company’s outlook for its current and future projects. Right now, the big focus of investors is the Robotaxi program, the Roadster unveiling, and what the outlook for Full Self-Driving’s expansion throughout Europe and the rest of the world looks like.
Robotaxi
Tesla just recently expanded its unsupervised Robotaxi program to Dallas and Houston, joining Austin as the first cities in the U.S. to have access to the company’s ride-hailing suite.
Tesla expands Unsupervised Robotaxi service to two new cities
Some saw this move as a quick effort to turn attention away from a delivery miss and an anticipated miss on earnings. However, we’ve seen Tesla be more than deliberate with its expansion of the Robotaxi suite, so it’s hard to believe the company would make this move if it were not truly ready to do so.
The company is also working to expand its U.S. ride-hailing service outside of Texas and California, and recently filed paperwork to build a Robotaxi-exclusive Supercharger stall.
Expansion is planned for Florida, Nevada, and Arizona at some point this year, with more states to follow.
Roadster Unveiling
The Roadster unveiling was slated for April 1, and then pushed back (once again) to “probably late April,” according to Elon Musk.
It does not appear that the Roadster unveiling will happen within that time frame, at least not to our knowledge. Nobody has received media or press invites for a Roadster unveiling, and given the lofty expectations set for the vehicle by Musk and Co., it seems like something they’d want to show off to the public.
The Roadster has become a truly frustrating project for Tesla and its fans; evidently, there is something that is not up to the expectations Musk and others have. Meanwhile, fans are essentially waiting for something that is six years late.
At this point, also given the company’s focus on autonomy, it almost seems more worth it to just cancel it, remove any and all timelines and expectations, and surprise people with something crazy down the line, maybe in two or three years. There should be no talk of it.
Full Self-Driving Global Expansion
We expect Musk and Co. to shed some details on where it stands with other European government bodies, as it recently was able to roll out FSD (Supervised) to customers in the Netherlands.
Spain is also working with Tesla to assess FSD’s viability as a publicly available option for owners.
With that being said, there should be some additional information for investors as they listen to the call; no talk of it would be a pretty big letdown.
Optimus
There will likely be a date set for the Gen 3 Optimus unveiling, and we’re hopeful Tesla can keep that date set in stone and meet it. Not reaching timelines is a relatively minor issue, but a company can only do this for so long before its fans and investors start to lose trust and disregard any talk about dates.
It seems this is happening already.
Optimus has been pegged as Tesla’s big money maker for the future. The goals and expectations are high, but it is a privilege to have that sort of pressure when investors know the company’s capability.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) is set to hold its Earnings Call for the first quarter of 2026 on Wednesday, and there are a lot of interesting things that are swirling around in terms of speculation from investors.
With the company’s executives, including CEO Elon Musk, answering a handful of questions that investors submit through the Say platform, fans want to know a lot of things about a lot of things.
These five questions come from Retail Investors, who are normal, everyday shareholders:
- When will we have the Optimus v3 reveal? When will Optimus production start, since we ended the Model S and Model X production earlier than mid-year? What’s the expected Optimus production rate exiting this year? What are the initial targeted skills?
- What milestones are you targeting for unsupervised FSD and Robotaxi expansion beyond Austin this year, and how will that drive recurring revenue?
- How will Hardware 3 cars reach Unsupervised Full Self-Driving?
- When do you expect Unsupervised Full Self-Driving to reach customer cars?
- When will Robotaxi expand past its current limited rollout?
Additionally, these are currently the three questions that are slated to be answered by Institutional Firms, which also answer a handful of questions during the call:
- Now that FSD has been approved in the Netherlands and is expected to launch across Europe this summer, can you discuss your Robotaxi strategy for the region?
- What enabled you to finish the AI5 tapeout early and were there any changes to the original vision? Last week, Elon said AI5 will go into Optimus and the Supercomputer, but one month ago said it would go into the Robotaxi. Has AI5 been dropped from the vehicle roadmap?
- Given the recent NHTSA incident filings, can you update us on the Robotaxi safety data? If safety validation remains the primary bottleneck, why not deploy thousands of vehicles to accelerate the removal of the safety driver?
The questions range through every current Tesla project, including FSD expansion and Optimus. However, many of the answers we will get will likely be repetitive answers we’ve heard in the past.
This is especially pertinent when the questions about when Unsupervised FSD will reach customer cars: we know Musk will say that it will happen this year. Is Tesla capable of that? Maybe. But a more transparent answer that is more revealing of a true timeline would be appreciated.
Hardware 3 owners are anxiously awaiting the arrival of FSD v14 Lite, which was promised to them last year for a release sometime this year.
The Earnings Call is set to take place on Wednesday at market close.
Tesla isn’t joking about building Optimus at an industrial scale: Here we go
Tesla (TSLA) Q1 2026 earnings results: beat on EPS and revenues
