Investor's Corner
Tesla bear apologizes to clients after releasing inaccurate TSLA note
Gordon L. Johnson, an analyst from Vertical Research Group and an outspoken Tesla bear, issued an apology to his company’s clients on Wednesday, after he published a note containing inaccurate information about the electric car company.
Tesla is currently involved in a class-action lawsuit filed by two investors, Kurt Friedman and Uppili Srinivasan, who alleged that the company, CEO Elon Musk, current Chief Financial Officer Deepak Ahuja, and former CFO Jason Wheeler intentionally misled shareholders about the progress of Model 3 production last year. According to the plaintiffs, Tesla’s executives were aware that the electric car could not be mass produced by the end of 2017. Despite this, Musk and the company as a whole allegedly made “false and misleading statements” about the company’s capability to produce 5,000 Model 3 per week by the end of the year. The plaintiffs noted that the negative market reaction to Tesla’s missed Model 3 goal has hurt their investments.
A hearing for the class-action lawsuit is scheduled for August 31, 2018. Tesla has filed a motion to dismiss the case, especially considering that the company did admit in October 2017 that the Model 3’s production ramp was behind schedule. U.S. District Court Judge Charles Breyer will hear arguments from both plaintiffs and defendants on the upcoming hearing. On July 11, the plaintiffs of the class-action lawsuit wrote a memo calling on Judge Breyer to not dismiss the case. Part of the plaintiffs’ memo, which could be viewed below, was a section reiterating their case against Tesla.
“Defendants concede the material falsity of Defendant Musk’s August 2, 2017 statement conveying then current facts, about ‘a gigantic machine producing—That’s meant for 5,000 vehicles a week and it’s producing a few hundred vehicles a week.’”
These statements, which were part of the memo, were an argument from the plaintiffs of the case. Amidst the stream of negative articles being directed at the electric car maker, some of the company’s staunch critics shared the plaintiffs’ request to the judge on social media. Considering the phrasing of the plaintiff’s memo, some Tesla bears believed that the company had admitted to misleading investors about Model 3 production. Tesla, for its part, noted in a statement to Barron’s that the assertion it admitted to any wrongdoing was “a complete lie.”
Vertical Research Group analyst Gordon L. Johnson, a rather aggressive Tesla bear (as seen in his debate with Tesla bull Trip Chowdhry from Global Equities Research), opted to write a note based on the plaintiffs’ memo to the judge. Similar to other critics on Twitter, Johnson framed his narrative on the assumption that Tesla had admitted to misleading investors. His note was headlined as “TSLA may have Admitted to Actionably False Statements.” As it became evident that he had committed an error, Johnson opted to correct his note, revising his note with a headline stating “ERRATUM.” Johnson also included an apology in his revision.
“We apologize for the inconvenience,” he wrote.
As Tesla heads into its Q2 2018 earnings call, the company’s stock (NASDAQ:TSLA) continues to exhibit volatility, though it recently received votes of confidence from its supporters from Wall Street. Together with Baird analyst Ben Kallo, Morgan Stanley’s Adam Jonas, and Consumer Edge Research’s James Albertine, Nomura Instinet analyst Romit Shah also issued a favorable note about Tesla. Shah reiterated the firm’s Buy rating on the electric car maker’s stock, placing a price target of $450.
“We expect improving fundamentals in Q3, consisting of a step-function up in revenue growth and positive operating leverage, driving shares higher. If Tesla can execute to plan, we believe that the narrative around bankruptcy risk will go away, thereby reducing short interest and driving the stock higher,” Shah wrote.
As of writing, Tesla stock is trading up 1.24% at $301.11 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
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.”
Elon Musk called it Epic: The full story of SpaceX’s Starship Flight 12
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.
Tesla brings Model Y L ‘Launch Series’ to the U.S. at $61,990
Tesla just told us twice that Model Y L is coming to the U.S.
