Investor's Corner
Tesla Earnings Call expectations from a bull: $25k, Robotaxi, Cybertruck, and Trump v. Harris
Tesla is set to report earnings for the third quarter this evening after market close, and one of its more bullish analysts, Gary Black, the managing partner of the Future Fund, has expectations of what could be discussed, along with his opinions on each.
Black gained attention just before the Robotaxi event that Tesla held earlier this month by stating that the $25,000 EV is more crucial in his eyes because it could drive the company to infiltrate a larger market share by taking buyers away from cars like the Toyota Corolla.
Here’s what he expects for the call:
Tesla’s $25,000 EV
Tesla enthusiasts disagreed with Black’s because of the massive implications of the Robotaxi, but in his own estimation, at least in the short-term, was more than credible. If Tesla could offer a $25,000 EV before incentives, it would come in at under $20,000, and it would eliminate nearly anyone from being out of the price range of a competitive EV.
However, Black does not see Tesla diving into any details on the potential for a $25,000 EV, and for good reason.
Tesla investors want Elon Musk to discuss these things at Q3 Earnings
If Tesla were to talk about a near-term release of the vehicle, it would cannibalize sales of the Model 3 and Model Y, two vehicles that the company is heavily incentivizing with attractive interest rates and other offers. Tesla is hoping for a strong fourth quarter so it can keep a delivery pace that is level with what the company achieved in 2023 with 1.8 million units.
Tesla Robotaxi Clarification
Black also said that the Robotaxi event, which the market did not see as a huge win according to how Tesla stock dropped after, needed more detail. This could be CEO Elon Musk’s opportunity to clarify the situation:
“There is likely to be at least one question on the detail missing from the robotaxi event: Specifically, how does TSLA go from 300 miles per disengagement today to the 17,000 miles per disengagement likely needed by regulators to approve a robotaxi deployment license? Mgmt can’t just assert that because of fleet size, data, and compute it will happen. There needs to be some support for the claim.”
Tesla Cybertruck Profitability
Tesla’s financials on the Cybertruck are also something that Black believes the company will be confronted about. The pickup is still in the early stages of production and it noted earlier this year that it should be at a breakeven by the end of the year.
It will be interesting to see if Tesla clarifies this.
Tesla’s EV Plans for Trump vs. Harris
Finally, Musk will likely be asked about Tesla and how it could perform under the specific EV policies of a Trump or Harris presidency. Both candidates have their own directions for the electric vehicle sector. While Musk has outspokenly supported Trump, he has not been the most supportive of EV mandates.
On the other hand, Harris was Vice President for Joe Biden, who rarely gave Tesla its flowers when it came to development and overall influence of the EV sector.
Tesla will report earnings at market close today, Wednesday, October 23.
Please email me with questions and comments at joey@teslarati.com. I’d love to chat! You can also reach me on Twitter @KlenderJoey, or if you have news tips, you can email us at tips@teslarati.com.
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.
