Investor's Corner
Tesla price target: analyst and firm adjustments ahead of Q2 Earnings Call
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) has gotten several updates to its price target from various analysts and firms as the Q2 Earnings Call next week takes focus.
Tech analysts and firms alike have made various adjustments to their outlook on the EV maker’s stock over the past several weeks.
Despite what has been a lackluster year for Tesla because of its expected and planned leveling in year-over-year sales growth due to the development of the next-gen platform and Robotaxi, price targets have improved because of the delivery beat reported along with robust and relatively unexpected energy deployment numbers.
What caused Tesla price target increases?
Tesla beat analyst expectations in terms of vehicle deliveries for Q2 by about 6,000 cars, which was significant. However, Tesla’s big surprise was a 132 percent increase in energy storage deployments from Q1 to Q2.
Q1 was a company record at the time, but Q2 more than doubled the amount of battery storage capacity.
This caused some analysts to adjust their price target breakdowns of Tesla stock and others to start to factor in the energy division more than previously.
Tesla bears officially have their next big threat: Tesla Energy
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Tesla $TSLA Price Target Adjustments
Wedbush, Morgan Stanley, Citi, and several other firms adjusted Tesla price targets after the company reported Q2 figures.
Wedbush
Wedbush raised its price target by $25 to $300 from $275, citing a “major turning point” in the bull case.
Dan Ives of Wedbush said:
“The key for Tesla’s stock is the Street recognizing that Tesla is the most undervalued AI play in the market in our view with a historical Robotaxi Day ahead for Musk and Tesla on August 8th that will lay the yellow brick road to FSD and an autonomous future.”
Morgan Stanley
Morgan Stanley did not increase its price target, but it did adjust the breakdown of how much the energy division factors into its $310 rating.
Previously, energy only made up $36 per share of the $310 price target that Morgan Stanley held. After this quarter, energy accounts for $50 per share.
“It’s no wonder that investors are starting to consider the real possibility that Tesla Energy may be worth more than Tesla Auto,” Adam Jonas of Morgan Stanley said in a note.
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Citi
Citi boosted its outlook for Tesla from $182 to $274, stating that AI and subsequent automotive developments will need to justify the uptick.
Citi analysts said the increase in stock price won’t come from “core EV fundamentals” but instead from the execution of its future projects:
“The Q2 delivery beat was also encouraging, which prompts increased estimates and supports Citi’s underlying call for improving EV sentiment this summer. However, the firm believes core EV fundamentals alone are unlikely to support significantly further upside from here in Tesla shares absent new product and AI catalysts.”
Mizuho
Mizuho held its ‘Neutral’ rating but increased its price target on Tesla shares from $180 to $230. It also is not relying on EV fundamentals to see this growth, but instead stating AI, especially Robotaxi and the Optimus humanoid robot, will be the major factors in an increase in valuation.
Analysts at the firm said these catalysts “could be much more difficult” to obtain but could be significant factors for an increase in price.
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SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) got an absolutely crazy price target rating from Raymond James after the company experienced a tough first few weeks following its Initial Public Offering (IPO).
Despite the tumultuous start, SpaceX has plenty of believers, and the company’s massively successful Starship launch last Friday, its 13th test flight of the massive rocket, went so smoothly that Raymond James analysts pushed its price target on the company to roughly 7 times its current trading level.
SpaceX Starship just nailed something it’s never done before
The firm officially put a “Strong Buy” rating and an $800 price target on the stock. It currently trades at around $113. Its all-time high is $225.64, reaching this trading level shortly after shares first went public.
Raymond James’ price target is tied to the firm’s confidence after Starship’s 13th test flight. Analysts at the firm said it was an incremental step that reduces engineering risks, citing the widely successful heat shield test that CEO Elon Musk recently detailed, the smooth deployment of Starlink V3 satellites, and a successful in-space engine relight.
SpaceX also managed to see Starship splash down safely in the Indian Ocean, while the Super Heavy Booster fell down to the Gulf of America with no incidents.
It is interesting to see these launches have such a tremendous impact on the stock and what investors think of it. After SpaceX initially delayed the Starship launch last week, shares fell tremendously. Most probably did not realize that the stand-down is a standard practice, especially if everything is not perfect.
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The mission was initially aborted due to an issue with Raptor engines. This was resolved, and Starship launched last Friday after another delay on Thursday, which was caused by weather.
Now that analysts have seen what SpaceX launches are capable of and how impressive the feat is, firms are adjusting their price targets accordingly, making it known that they have high expectations for the space exploration company.
Elon Musk
SpaceX Starship just nailed something it’s never done before
SpaceX’s Starship flew successfully Friday, landing both stages and deploying its first Starlink V3 satellites.
Starship’s thirteenth test flight delivered exactly what SpaceX needed with a clean liftoff, two successful stage recoveries, and the first real payload the vehicle has ever carried to space. Booster 20 and Ship 40 lifted off at 5:51 p.m. CT from Starbase, and by the time the mission wrapped roughly an hour later, both halves of the rocket had done exactly what they were supposed to do.
Booster 20 separated from Ship 40 a few minutes into the flight and stuck a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico about six minutes after liftoff. That is a meaningful turnaround from Flight 12 in May, when the booster lost several engines during its boostback burn before a hard water landing attempt.
Starship as seen from Starlink satellites pic.twitter.com/e2hvfmnewh
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2026
Starship 40’s performance was arguably the bigger win. The vehicle deployed the first 20 operational Starlink V3 satellites Starship has ever carried, then flew a suborbital arc to a landing in the Indian Ocean that SpaceX commentator Dan Huot called the company’s softest splashdown yet. “This is a dream scenario for this team that’s trying to get this heat shield data,” Huot said on the live broadcast, according to Space.com’s live coverage. “I’m a little over the moon right now. Wow. Lucky number 13.”
Unlike the mass simulators SpaceX flew on Flight 12, these were production Starlink V3 satellites, meant to extend solar arrays and antennas and attempt to link with the broader constellation before reentering minutes later. Getting real hardware through a full deploy sequence on only the second flight of the V3 generation keeps Starship on schedule for the payload work NASA is counting on for future Artemis lunar landings.
What an awesome launch, really seems like everything went super well and it was all incredibly smooth.
SpaceX is awesome. Very interested to see how the market will respond on Monday pic.twitter.com/KSHmyBfV55
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 25, 2026
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— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 25, 2026
The flight also arrives at a moment when SpaceX needed a win. SPCX has traded below its $135 IPO price since mid-July, as Teslarati reported when the mission slipped to Friday, and short interest has climbed to roughly a third of the tradable float. A clean flight will not fix a balance sheet, but it does answer the one question SpaceX absolutely needed answered this week: whether the fixes made after the July 16 abort would hold up under real flight conditions. They did, on both stages, on the first try after the redesign.
SpaceX has not set a target date for Flight 14, though the company has said it wants to push toward an orbital attempt on the next mission. After Friday, that goal looks a lot more within reach.
Tesla short sellers won big following the company’s massive fall on Wall Street after it reported subpar Earnings on Wednesday.
Tesla short sellers collected about $4.12 billion in single-day profits on Thursday, according to Bloomberg. Shares fell as much as 15 percent during Thursday’s session. It closed as one of the worst days for Tesla on Wall Street in the past three years.
Investors sold off the stock after Tesla said it would aggressively direct its spending toward AI and its Optimus robot project. The company had record revenues, which were driven by one of the strongest quarters in terms of vehicle deliveries in company history.
However, it missed EPS estimates by reporting just $0.33, a far cry from the $0.53 analysts expected.
S3 Partners reported that about 3 percent of Tesla’s outstanding stock is sold short. Managing Director at S3, Ihor Dusaniwsky, provided the short seller’s potential profit, as well as another figure: shorts have likely had paper gains of $8.92 billion this year, as Tesla shares are down 30 percent in 2026.
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Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results: miss on EPS, beat on revenue
Tesla has burned short sellers many times in the past, but the company’s latest Earnings Call was a chance for those skeptics to taste some payback. Although the company gave some very transparent information regarding future projects, the rollout of Robotaxi, Optimus, and Semi, many investors took their profits on Thursday.
Notable short sellers like Michael Burry have been transparent about their skepticism around Tesla shares. Burry just revealed three weeks ago that he had opened up a new short on the stock, stating he shorted Tesla shares at $416.22. “Happy it jumped back to this level,” he said in a blog post.
At the time of publication, Tesla shares were down about 3 percent and the stock was trading at $309.92.
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