Investor's Corner
Tesla gets ‘Outperform’ rating amid improving ‘fundamentals’ and Model 3 ramp
Tesla shares (NASDAQ:TSLA) received a vote of confidence from Wall Street on Thursday, as Oppenheimer reiterated its “Outperform” rating on the company and Loup Ventures managing partner Gene Munster noted that the electric car maker’s fundamentals could outweigh the controversy currently surrounding CEO Elon Musk.
Oppenheimer analyst Colin Rusch wrote in a note to clients on Thursday that Tesla seems poised to meet its targets for Model 3 production and profitability in Q3. Rusch’s note comes amidst Musk seemingly expressing his support of a report recently published by electric car-themed website InsideEVs, which listed the Model 3, Model S, and Model X, as the Top 3 best-selling electric cars in the United States for August.
“While InsideEVs‘ estimates are just that, estimates, we believe the service has been effective in identifying directional and order of magnitude trends on monthly shipments for Model 3 in lieu of verified data from the company. We believe TSLA is tracking toward achieving its 3Q:18 guidance. We believe TSLA has the potential to be a transformational technology company and deliver outsized returns,” Rusch noted.
Rusch reiterated Oppenheimer’s “Outperform” rating on TSLA stock, while also reaffirming his 12-18 month price target of $385 — a 37% upside to Wednesday’s close.
Loup Ventures managing partner Gene Munster also expressed his optimism about Tesla’s Q3 performance in a recent interview with FOX Business. When asked about his views on the controversies currently surrounding Elon Musk and the stock’s recovery this Thursday, Munster noted that behind the CEO’s questionable online behavior is a company whose fundamentals are improving.
“There’s two sides of the ledger. The side of Elon Musk as a leader — and as someone who has been an investor, an adviser, and an analyst for many years — that has been, to say, concerning is an understatement, his behavior over the last six months, and the last few weeks in particular. The other side of the ledger is how the business is doing, and I suspect that the reason why the stock is up is that he’s out today saying that their sales are going well. He made some tweets related to that. They (also) had an order of 30 other Semis from Walmart.
“If, in fact, they do exit the September quarter profitable, which is what they’ve predicted, I think that that will basically trump any of the negativity we’ve seen around him. So our bet is that the fundamentals are gonna outweigh this concerning and inexcusable behavior,” he said.
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Robots assemble electric cars in Tesla’s Fremont factory.
Tesla stock has seen a wild August, particularly after Elon Musk posted a tweet stating that he is thinking of taking the company private at $420 per share, and that he had “funding secured.” The days and weeks following the announcement were tumultuous in the least, with lawsuits, reports of SEC investigations, and Elon Musk’s capability to lead Tesla being questioned by the company’s critics. Tesla’s stock mostly dropped in August after Musk’s tweet, culminating in Wednesday’s close when the stock ended the day at $280.74 per share.
Based on strategies that Tesla adopted over the past two quarters, there is a good chance that the company will push the Model 3 even more this September, which is the final month of Q3 2018. Tesla, after all, has a tendency to adopt radical strategies during the last month of a quarter, as seen in its production blitz during the final week of March when it built more than 2,000 Model 3 in seven days, as well as its initiatives in June when it built GA4 and air-freighted robots from Europe in an attempt to hit its target of producing 5,000 Model 3 in one week.
Tesla is attempting to produce 50,000-55,000 Model 3 this quarter while hitting profitability at the same time. While these are ambitious goals, the company has been showing signs that it is capable of actually meeting its Q3 targets. The company, for one, has shown that it can sustain its pace of manufacturing 5,000 units of the electric car in a week, which was confirmed by Elon Musk during the Q2 2018 earnings call. Tesla might also be within reach of its goal in terms of profitability, especially considering that Detroit veteran Sandy Munro concluded that the Long Range RWD Model 3, which would likely comprise a significant number of the company’s deliveries this Q3, exceeds 30% profit after a thorough teardown and analysis of the vehicle.
SpaceX stock did the opposite of what most of Wall Street expected this week, when the day designed to be its most dangerous turned into a rally, and the rally kept going.
Thursday marked the first major lockup expiration since SpaceX’s June IPO, making roughly 911.5 million insider held shares eligible to trade for the first time, more than doubling the company’s public float. Analysts and short sellers had spent weeks bracing for a flood of selling, especially after the stock fell 13 percent following its first earnings report as a public company on Tuesday. Instead, shares rose 6.1 percent Thursday to close at $114.92, and by Friday they were trading near $129, up more than another 12 percent on the day.
SpaceX shorts get warned by Musk ally, echoing Tesla’s early struggles
The setup made the outcome notable. Short interest had climbed to roughly 34 percent of the float heading into earnings, among the highest of any large cap stock, with about 95 percent of available shares to borrow already on loan. CEO Elon Musk warned short sellers twice in the weeks before the lockup, writing on X that “the survival probability of firms who maintain a significant short position in SpaceX over time is very low,” then following up on the morning of earnings with “I try to warn them, but they just double down.”
When the newly unlocked shares hit the market and the selloff never showed up, some of that short position appears to have started unwinding. TipRanks reported that options activity shifted toward bullish strategies like put selling and risk reversals following the rally, with roughly $600 million in options premium trading Thursday alone. Retail buyers also stepped in during the earnings dip, according to Vanda Research.
The fundamentals behind the stock have not changed much in a week. SpaceX’s revenue nearly doubled year over year to $7.8 billion, with Starlink subscribers doubling to 12 million and the company’s AI segment growing 247 percent. What spooked investors on Tuesday was the spending side. Capital expenditures jumped to more than $18 billion for the quarter, up from $2.8 billion a year earlier, with AI investment alone rising from $749 million to $15.8 billion. Wall Street remains split on whether that spending is building infrastructure SpaceX needs or outrunning what the business can currently support, a debate Teslarati has tracked since shares first came under pressure.
None of that resolves the bigger question hanging over the stock. Thursday’s release was only the first of nine staggered lockup tranches, with roughly $800 billion worth of additional shares scheduled to become eligible through October, and Musk’s own stake stays locked until next June. If this week is any indication, the market is treating that supply as something it can absorb rather than something to fear, at least for now.
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Cybertruck
Tesla Cybertruck production snaps back after ugly supplier fight
Cybertrucks are piling up again at Giga Texas after Tesla’s court win against a parts supplier.
Cybertruck production at Giga Texas is showing its first visible recovery since Tesla sued a supplier last month over withheld manufacturing tooling.
Aerial observer Joe Tegtmeyer flew over the Austin factory Wednesday morning and counted roughly 100 or more Cybertrucks filling the outbound lot, a sharp jump from the thin numbers seen in recent weeks. The flyover came a day after a judge granted Tesla a temporary restraining order against Angstrom Automotive Group, the parts supplier at the center of the dispute.
Tesla filed an emergency lawsuit in late July after Angstrom told the automaker it planned to close the Troy, Texas facility where Tesla’s die-cast tools, trim dies and other Cybertruck stamping equipment were housed. According to Tesla’s complaint, a shipment of 700 finished parts never left the building, and when Tesla sent representatives to retrieve its equipment, accompanied by law enforcement, they were turned away. Angstrom allegedly then asked for an extra $250,000 a week to keep operating, which Tesla’s filing described as holding its own property for ransom.
TESLA: U.S. District Judge Christopher R. Wolfe of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, Waco Division granted Tesla a Temporary Restraining Order and Writ of Replevin in its dispute with Angstrom Automotive (Case No. 6:26-cv-00477).
The order authorizes… https://t.co/E1DKcQSxMn pic.twitter.com/LR8aAiV2Og
— S.E. Robinson, Jr. (@SERobinsonJr) August 5, 2026
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The restraining order gives Tesla immediate right of entry to Angstrom’s facility to recover the tooling. It is temporary, with a fuller hearing still to come, but the speed of Wednesday’s rebound suggests the Angstrom shortage was indeed the main bottleneck limiting Cybertruck output. Outbound lot counts are an imperfect measure of actual production, since finished trucks can sit for days before shipping, but a lot that full after a lean stretch is a meaningful signal.
Cybertruck output at Giga Texas has fluctuated all year as Tesla worked through supply issues and introduced new trims, including a cheaper Dual Motor AWD version that drew strong early demand.
Venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya has cautioned investors shorting SpaceX shares, drawing a direct parallel to the intense short-selling pressure Tesla faced in its early public years.
Responding to reports of elevated short interest in the newly public rocket, satellite, and AI company, Palihapitiya noted that similar dynamics played out with Tesla, where aggressive short sellers ultimately “went broke.”
SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) went public on June 12, 2026, in the largest IPO on record, pricing at $135 per share. Shares quickly surged to an all-time high of $225.64 just days later, briefly implying a valuation exceeding $2 trillion. The stock has since retreated sharply amid valuation concerns, lockup expiration fears, and broader market dynamics.
By early August, it traded near $108–$125, representing a roughly 50 percent decline from the peak and bringing the market capitalization closer to the $1.5–1.7 trillion range. On August 4, shares closed up more than 9 percent at $125.33 ahead of earnings before facing pressure in after-hours and premarket trading.
Short interest has climbed dramatically. According to S3 Partners data widely cited in market reports, short positions reached approximately 219.3 million shares by late July, about 34 percent of the limited public float of roughly 640 million shares, and represented a notional value of around $24.6 billion.
Utilization of shares available to borrow hit 95 percent, with borrow fees rising. This level of shorting exceeded the dollar value of short bets against Tesla at the time and built rapidly ahead of two catalysts: the company’s first post-IPO earnings and an August 6 lockup expiration that could free up to 911.5 million additional shares.
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CEO Elon Musk has issued warnings of his own. In mid-July, as short interest approached one-third of the float, he posted that “the survival probability of firms who maintain a significant short position in SpaceX over time is very low,” reiterating his view that the company could ultimately be worth more than Earth if it achieves its goals.
On August 4, just before earnings, Musk responded to the latest short-interest data by saying, “I try to warn them, but they just double down.”
SpaceX delivered its first quarterly results as a public company after the close on August 4. Second-quarter revenue rose 92 percent year-over-year to $7.8 billion, beating consensus estimates near $6.8–6.9 billion.
The net loss narrowed to $541 million, or 9 cents per share, better than the roughly 23–24 cent loss expected. Starlink/connectivity contributed about $4.3 billion (up 66 percent), while the AI business generated $2.6 billion (up roughly 250 percent). Capital expenditures were heavy at $18.4 billion, largely tied to AI infrastructure. Management projected a $100 billion annualized revenue run rate by year-end 2026 and outlined a path toward $1 trillion in annual revenue by 2030.
The combination of Chamath’s historical reminder, Musk’s repeated alerts, and the company’s ambitious growth targets underscores the high-stakes debate surrounding SPCX. Short sellers are positioned for near-term supply pressure from the lockup, while long-term bulls point to Starlink scale, Starship progress, and AI compute expansion as reasons the bears may ultimately face the same fate as many early Tesla skeptics.
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