Investor's Corner
Tesla (TSLA) blazes past $300 as it shrugs off criticism, focuses on Model 3 deliveries
Tesla stock (NASDAQ:TSLA) is on a rebound after falling more than 5% on Tuesday over news of the US Justice Department’s probe on Elon Musk’s now-infamous “funding secured” tweet last month. On Thursday, TSLA stock blazed past the $300 barrier once more, trading at $303.79 per share after the opening bell.
The recovery of the electric car maker’s stock did not happen overnight. Over the course of Wednesday’s trading, Tesla stock battled an initial drop before beginning a steady 4.93% climb back up to $299.02 per share. Quite surprisingly, Tesla’s strong recovery on Wednesday came amidst the release of negative stories about the company. Former GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz, for one, was featured on a CNBC Closing Bell segment, where he stated that Tesla was “headed for the graveyard” since it has “no tech advantage, no software advantage, (and) no battery advantage” over rival electric car makers.
AutoNation CEO Mike Jackson also aired his criticism of Elon Musk over his alleged “bait-and-switch” tactic for the $35,000 Standard range RWD Model 3, which is yet to be released. A study in the UK from the country’s Department for Transport further warned motorists that the increasing number of electric vehicles on roads would likely increase congestion and extend travel time.
Amidst the release of these criticisms were a vote of confidence for the electric car maker. In a note to Bernstein’s clients, analyst Toni Sacconaghi pointed out that Tesla’s vehicles, particularly the Model 3, would probably be unrivaled in the premium electric car segment for a while. Debunking a Tesla bear thesis which suggests that superior vehicles from more experienced manufacturers could easily eat into the upstart company’s market share, the Bernstein analyst stated that “there is no actual flood of competition coming,” and that the Model 3 “faces no credible competition whatsoever until 2020.”
Behind the criticism and the votes of confidence from Wall Street, Tesla also showed signs that it was addressing Elon Musk’s self-dubbed “delivery logistics hell.” Reports from the Tesla community suggest that across the United States and even in Canada, the company is now expediting the delivery process of the Model 3 to as many reservation holders as possible. Tesla is reportedly pushing deliveries so much that handovers are being conducted up to 10 p.m.
Frenetic delivery activity at Tesla’s south lot. Adjacent streets in the Fremont Industrial Complex are full of loaded carrier trucks, mostly clustered around motels. (Preparing for the next day long haul?) pic.twitter.com/TclbEvuohn
— ☮️ CYBER-DX (@AndreiBulu) September 19, 2018
As the third quarter approaches its final days, Tesla seems to be focusing on its fundamentals, particularly Model 3 production and deliveries. It remains to be seen how many vehicles the company would manufacture and deliver this Q3, but both CEO Elon Musk and board member Kimbal Musk have teased that Tesla’s numbers this quarter would be quite surprising.
Elon Musk, for one, noted in a letter to employees that Tesla would likely build and deliver “more than twice as many cars as (it) did last quarter.” In a segment of CNBC‘s Closing Bell, Kimbal Musk further stated that “it’s really gonna blow people’s minds how many Model 3s are gonna appear in America in just the next couple of weeks.”
As of writing, Tesla shares are up 1.24% at $302.74 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.
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