Investor's Corner
Tesla’s Q2 Earnings Call and how it differs from 2020’s in a big way
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) is set to report Earnings for Q2 2021 later today. Just a year and four days after it revealed its financial performance for Q2 2020, its performance during the second quarter of this year is vastly different from that of last year. With an emerging need for the company’s vehicles and energy products, along with the potential to extend its quarterly profitability streak to eight consecutive quarters, let’s take a look at how the two quarters have differed and what is expected from analysts on the day of the call.
Q2 2020 vs. Q2 2021
Tesla’s Q2 2020 remains one of the biggest “what-ifs” in Tesla’s short and storied history. While the company was riding a wave of momentum due to its three straight reported quarters of profitability, speculation persisted that Tesla might have had issues extending this streak in Q2 ’20. It was a simple enough reason as well. The COVID-19 pandemic was ripping through the world, and Tesla, despite its apparent immunization when it comes to the global semiconductor shortage, was prone to uncertainty at its manufacturing plants that spanned from Buffalo to Shanghai.
The pandemic shut down the company’s main production facility in Fremont for most of the quarter. It affected the company’s trending growth of production throughout its vehicle manufacturing facilities, and Tesla reported lower production figures than in Q1 2020, dropping from 102,627 to 88,272. Deliveries, however, increased from 88,400 to 90,650.
Tesla navigated a difficult Q2 with better-than-anticipated numbers, beating Wall Street expectations with $6.036 billion in revenue, eclipsing Wall Street estimates of $5.146 billion.
In terms of deliveries and production figures, Tesla continued growth, rising from 180,338 production and 184,800 deliveries in Q1 2021 to 206,421 and 201,250 in Q2. These numbers were attributed to the mass-market Model 3 and Model Y, accounting for an overwhelming percentage of each category for each of 2021’s quarters so far. The Model S and Model X were not being produced during Q1, and deliveries of the Model S Plaid started in Q2. The Model X delivery timeline has not been detailed, but Tesla’s website states the vehicle is set to begin deliveries in January-February 2022.
Situations were vastly different from Q2 ’20 to Q2 ’21. Last year’s second quarter was widely up in the air on what Tesla would report. Its ability to hit profitability once again wasn’t much of a shock to Tesla bulls, but others were impressed by the continuing growth story despite tough economic times. The Q2 showing may have contributed to the automaker’s stock soaring into the stratosphere. Already on an upward trend, the stock would continue to increase in value, peaking out at $900.40.
What analysts are saying on the day of Tesla Earnings
Analysts have already put forth their expectations for Tesla’s Earnings Call later today, but some are still putting in their last two cents as market close comes closer.
Tesla investor and former critic Jim Cramer stated earlier today that he expects CEO Elon Musk to talk about competition and the upcoming release of the Tesla Cybertruck. Cramer sees Tesla’s imminent entrance into the pickup market as the company’s introduction to disrupting Ford’s domination of the U.S. passenger truck sector.
“What he [Elon] has to deal with for the first time is competition,” Cramer said. “Let’s see what he does with the challenge of others,” he added, sprinkling in details about Lucid’s introduction to the New York Stock Exchange earlier today.
Oppenheimer’s Colin Rusch, interestingly, said that the firm isn’t “super concerned about results this quarter.” Instead, Oppenheimer will be paying close mind to Tesla’s updates of the ongoing construction projects in Austin, Texas, and Germany at Giga Berlin, along with the progress of Full Self-Driving. “From a technology perspective, the progress on autonomy is really the heart of the matter if you’re making a bullish bet here,” Rusch said to Yahoo Finance.
Tesla recently announced that it would offer a $200 per month subscription version of the $10,000 Full Self-Driving suite. Rusch said there is potential for between 10 and 20 million customers during the latter half of this decade. “You get to some pretty heavy numbers from a cash flow perspective, and I think that’s what’s going to be at stake here for the next couple years.”
$TSLA Performance on Earnings Day
At the time of writing, Tesla stock was up over 2.1%, or $13.60, trading at around $656.88. The stock was up over 3% earlier in the day. The anticipation for an extended profitability streak and potential updates regarding the 4680 battery cell, Giga Texas, and the Cybertruck, may have contributed to the increase in price ahead of the call.
Tesla will report its Earnings for Q2 2021 tonight at 5:30 PM EST, 2:30 PM PST. Prior to the call, Tesla will issue its Q2 2021 Update Letter on the Investor Relations website.
Disclosure: Joey Klender is a TSLA Shareholder.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) reported its earnings for the first quarter of 2026 on Wednesday afternoon. Here’s what the company reported compared to what Wall Street analysts expected.
The earnings results come after Tesla reported a massive beat on vehicle deliveries for the second quarter, delivering 489,126 vehicles and building 451,758 cars during the three-month span.
This was a major shock for those on Wall Street as they anticipated somewhere around 400,000 deliveries for the quarter, and showed Tesla still has plenty of demand for its vehicles around the world and in the U.S. despite losing the $7,500 EV Tax Credit last year.
Tesla Q2 2026 Earnings Results
- Non-GAAP EPS – $0.33 reported vs. $0.53 expected
- Revenues – $28.236 billion reported vs. $26.4 billion expected
- Free Cash Flow- -$1.092B
- Profit -$ 4.751B
Tesla (beat/missed) analyst expectations, so the market response to the company’s quarter is what we will look for next.
Tesla shares closed today down just over 1 percent, trading at $374.01.
In the past, it has been anyone’s guess with what Tesla shares will do after they report earnings. Strong quarters have resulted in sharp drops, while lackluster quarters have seen the stock shoot up considerably.
Tesla will hold its Q2 2026 Earnings Call in about 90 minutes at 5:30 p.m. on the East Coast. Remarks will be made by CEO Elon Musk and other executives, who will shed some light on the investor questions that we covered earlier this week.
You can stream it below. Additionally, we will be doing our Live Blog on X and Facebook.
Q2 2026 Earnings Call https://t.co/zZS6ii2TWK
— Tesla (@Tesla) July 22, 2026
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) will report its earnings for the second quarter of 2026 this evening after market close, and investors and analysts are waiting anxiously to see what the company will report for the second three-month span of the year.
Analysts have already put out their expectations from a financial standpoint for the company’s second quarter, but what’s unknown is what Tesla plans to discuss during the call.
Financial Expectations
Wall Street consensus expectations put Tesla’s Earnings Per Share (EPS) at $0.53, while revenues are expected to come in around $26.4 billion.
This would compare to an EPS of $0.39 and $22.19 billion compared to Tesla’s Q2 2025. Last quarter, EPS came in at $0.41 on $22.387 billion of revenue. Additionally in Q1, Tesla beat analyst expectations, but shares dropped over 3 percent the following trading day.
What We Expect
In terms of discussions, Tesla earnings are pretty sporadic and depend on a handful of things, including current events, investor questions, and more.
Tesla uses a platform called Say to field questions from investors and analysts. These questions are what will be used during the call. Here are the top 5 from the Retail side and top 3 from the Institutional side:
Retail:
“Tesla has missed short-term guidance on robotaxi 3 earnings reports in a row, from 50% coverage of USA by end of 2025 to most recently 7 new cities in 1H26. What is keeping Tesla back from accomplishing these short term goals that they’ve set for themselves?”
“What are the main constraints to expanding robotaxi operations faster, and how do you see that lining up with Cybercab production?”
“What’s the current status of Optimus Gen 3 production ramp, initial deployment in factories, and external sales timeline/volume for 2027? What tasks can we expect the Optimus to perform by end of 2027?”
“To reward long-term Tesla retail shareholders for their loyalty, can you commit to achieving at least half of the goals outlined in your 2025 compensation plan before considering any offers to acquire or merge Tesla?”
“Why has growth of robotaxi vehicles stalled? When will we see cybercab start customer rides?”
Institutional
“Previously, you’ve said Tesla would lead the R&D while SpaceX would lead production for Terafab. Can you provide an update on how that division of responsibilities is evolving, and any additional clarity on the expected capital contributions from Tesla and SpaceX?”
“For autonomous driving, Tesla’s fleet created a huge data advantage by collecting billions of real-world miles. That advantage doesn’t yet exist for Optimus. How should we think about data availability and its impact on Optimus development?”
“Why is it necessary to limit robotaxi operations within specific zones within cities to start? Will every city have to be rolled out this way?”
Tesla will report earnings for Q2 this evening with the Shareholder Deck at 4 p.m. ET, with the call starting around 5:30 p.m. ET.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk handed Grok something no other AI company can get their hands on
Elon Musk says SpaceX will feed engineering data into Grok’s next model, avoiding restricted material.
Elon Musk said Tuesday that SpaceX will feed its internal engineering data into the next major training run for Grok, the AI model now folded into SpaceX following February’s merger. In a post on X, Musk wrote that SpaceX’s “massive corpus of world-class engineering data,” excluding anything restricted under U.S. arms export law, will be added during supplemental training of what he called the “2T run,” a reference to a roughly two trillion parameter model that would nearly double the parameters behind the latest Grok 4.5 that’s rolling out.
SpaceX’s massive corpus of world-class engineering data (excluding material blocked by ITAR) will be added during supplemental training of the 2T run.
This will dramatically improve Grok’s engineering capabilities. https://t.co/BbQEViFByn
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 21, 2026
The excluded material that Musk is referring to would fall under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), which restricts export of technical data tied to defense and space hardware. That likely rules out propulsion specifics for Merlin and Raptor engines along with guidance and control details for SpaceX’s launch vehicles, but leaves manufacturing knowledge, materials science, and Starlink hardware design on the table.
The announcement extends a pattern that has been building since SpaceX’s Nasdaq debut in June, when the company went public with Grok and xAI’s Colossus supercomputer folded into the pitch to investors.
Days after that listing, SpaceX closed its $60 billion all stock acquisition of coding startup Cursor, giving xAI both enterprise software distribution and a stream of real world developer data to train on. Grok 4.5 launched July 8 running partly on that Cursor training data, with Musk describing it as roughly comparable to Anthropic’s Opus 4.7 but faster and cheaper to run.
Feeding SpaceX’s own engineering data into the next AI model follows the same logic Musk has applied across xAI’s sister companies. Tesla supplies real world driving data and manufacturing expertise, X supplies conversational data, and now SpaceX supplies aerospace engineering data built up since 2002.
Musk did not give a release date for the upcoming AI model, referred to elsewhere as Grok 4.6. He has said the two trillion parameter run is in its final training phase and expected to wrap this week.
Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results: miss on EPS, beat on revenue
Tesla is about to make parking in busy lots less stressful than ever
