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Tesla (TSLA) Q3 2019 earnings and return to profitability: Here’s Wall Street’s reaction

Tesla Model 3 production line in Gigafactory 3, Shanghai, China. (Credit: Tesla)

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Tesla shares (NASDAQ:TSLA) spiked as high as 20% on the heels of its Q3 2019 earnings release, with the company posting a GAAP net profit of $143 million and a non-GAAP profit of $342 million, as well as earnings per share of $1.91. The results pretty much blew away Wall Street’s expectations, particularly as analysts expected Tesla to post a loss for the third quarter. 

Following its blockbuster earnings report and an equally encouraging Q&A session that saw Tesla executives confirm an earlier Model Y production date, Gigafactory 3’s battery facility, and Solar Roof V3 (among others), Wall Street has issued its take on TSLA and its Q3 earnings. Here is a compilation of what Wall Street has to say about Tesla’s Q3 2019 results. 

The Bulls

Baird analyst Ben Kallo, who holds an “Outperform” rating and a $355 price target on TSLA stock, stated that Gigafactory 3’s activation in Shanghai could be a true difference-maker. “Tesla did lower 2019 volume guidance, though paradoxically we think this will drive estimates higher as investors are better able to bridge to fourth-quarter deliveries. We think ramping volumes (especially in Shanghai) and product development will provide a steady cadence of catalysts over the next 6-12 months and expect shares to trade higher,” he noted.

Piper Jaffray’s Alexander Potter, who holds an “Overweight” rating on the electric car maker, stated that “it’s getting harder to poke holes in the TSLA thesis.” Potter mentioned that while skeptics had legitimate concerns in the past, Tesla has reached a point where it is building cash, gaining traction in the market, and boosting its margins. “Even considering all the EV-related fanfare from competitors, it’s hard to see how other auto companies can catch up with Tesla — at least in the next 3+ years,” he stated. 

The Neutral

Daniel Ives of Wedbush, who maintains a “Neutral” rating and a $220 price target on Tesla stock, described Q3 2019 as a “Picasso-like quarter,” though he maintained that concerns remain about the sustainability of demand for the company’s vehicles and products. “Is demand and this level of profitability sustainable? That will be the key question for the Street this morning as the bull/bear debate will view this quarter as Musk and Fremont pulling an eye-popping quarter out of the hat with worries that the lack of investments and tighter expense model is not sustainable going forward,” he noted. 

Roth Capital analyst Craig Irwin, who has a “Neutral” rating on TSLA stock and an adjusted price target of $249 from $224 per share, described the company’s third-quarter results as “robust,” though he also stated that he remains cautious, partly due to profit sustainability concerns. “(Tesla’s) volatile quarterly EPS progression should have investors closely scrutinizing sustainable profit levels, and credible growth rates in an increasingly competitive environment,” Irwin stated. 

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The Bears

Arndt Ellinghorst of Evercore ISI, who has an “Underperform” rating and a price target of $200 per share on Tesla stock, admitted that Q3 2019 was an outstanding quarter for the electric car maker. Nevertheless, the analyst stated that he remains concerned about momentum and profitability in 2020. “While we remain concerned on 2020 momentum/profitability, we acknowledge this was an outstanding quarter relative to expectations, despite headwinds of lower average selling price and facility tooling which we expect to increase as we approach Model Y launch next year,” he wrote. 

JPMorgan analyst Ryan Brinkman, who also has an “Underweight” rating and a $220 price target, stated that he remains “unsure that this is really the breakout quarter that is likely to be claimed by the bulls.” Tesla’s gross margin of 20.8% for the third quarter beat JPMorgan’s estimates of 18.7%, though Brinkman argued that he is not certain about the “quality” of this beat. 

As of writing, Tesla stock is trading +15.55% at $294.29 per share.

Disclosure: I have no ownership in shares of TSLA and have no plans to initiate any positions within 72 hours.

Simon is an experienced automotive reporter with a passion for electric cars and clean energy. Fascinated by the world envisioned by Elon Musk, he hopes to make it to Mars (at least as a tourist) someday. For stories or tips--or even to just say a simple hello--send a message to his email, simon@teslarati.com or his handle on X, @ResidentSponge.

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Investor's Corner

SpaceX reveals how its 1 Million AI satellite network will work and prevent space collisions

SpaceX reveals plans for one million Starmind AI satellites and calls out operators hiding maneuvers.

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Concept rendering of SpaceX Starmind constellation via Grok
Concept rendering of SpaceX Starmind constellation via Grok

SpaceX has put the largest satellite count it has ever published into writing, and it says that plan only works if every other operator in orbit starts sharing what it knows.

In a new Space Safety page highlighted Tuesday morning by Sawyer Merritt on X, SpaceX said it “plans to operate up to 100,000 Starlink satellites and up to 1 million Starmind AI satellites to meet the growing demand for broadband and supercompute.” Starlink has a little over 11,000 satellites in orbit today, so the target alone implies roughly a ninefold expansion of the broadband network.

Starmind is SpaceX’s orbital AI compute constellation. Elon Musk confirmed the Starmind name in June after an xAI trademark filing surfaced, and in August SpaceX said it was working with Nvidia on the compute payload. The FCC accepted the filing for up to one million satellites back in February.

FCC accepts SpaceX filing for 1 million orbital data center plan

SpaceX also released a new render of what a full Starmind constellation could look like. Alongside it, SpaceX VP Michael Nicolls explained why the satellites will not operate on their own. “We need to operate clusters of satellites in tight formation to get enough coherent compute to run AI models efficiently,” Nicolls said. “A cluster will be 10-ish satellites connected with 10 terabits or so of bandwidth between them, and interconnected to the broader constellation.”

That is the most specific detail SpaceX has given on how Starmind will be built. Instead of a million independent servers, the network would work as tightly packed groups of about 10 satellites acting as one compute unit, with Starlink’s laser links carrying results back to Earth.


Packing satellites that close together, at that scale, makes collision avoidance the central problem, and most of the Space Safety page is aimed at other operators. SpaceX said Starlink encountered collision risks with about 650 unique maneuvering third party satellites in 2026, and only about half of them shared data. Over six months, Starlink recorded roughly 164,000 more collision risks where the closest approach came within four hours of an unannounced maneuver.

Some operators keep maneuver plans private over proprietary concerns, while others cannot get government permission to share them. SpaceX called those policies “counterproductive,” saying they “largely only serve to create preventable collision risk between satellites.” Starlink is also offering a free ephemeris sharing and screening platform that returns risk results within a minute, backed by its Stargaze network of 30,000 optical sensors.

The push comes as the Starmind application draws opposition from astronomers and environmental groups. In a September filing with the FCC, SpaceX said each Starmind satellite could weigh up to 4,000 kg, nearly seven times the mass of a Starlink V2 Mini. Musk has brushed off crowding concerns before, telling viewers in June that “space is enormous” and that SpaceX already knows how to run very large constellations safely.

SpaceX’s Starmind page says its Gigasat factory in Bastrop, Texas, is designed to produce AI satellites at scale, with deployment of thousands of units starting as soon as late 2027.

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Investor's Corner

Tesla deliveries best Wall Street guesses alongside second-best energy quarter

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Credit: Tesla Europe & Middle East | X

Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) reported strong delivery figures that beat Wall Street guesses, and they were revealed alongside the company’s second-best quarter in terms of energy deployments ever.

Tesla announced this morning that it delivered 486,532 cars in Q3, while producing 464,391, exceeding analyst consensus, which sat around 462,000 units.

Meanwhile, Tesla reported 13.7 GWh of energy storage deployed for the quarter. That’s the second-best quarter Tesla has ever reported on that side of things.

Vehicle Deliveries

Deliveries were strong, and it was another quarter when Tesla had the opportunity to outshine the Wall Street pundits who are quick to criticize and slow to give credit. Tesla saw a slight decrease in deliveries compared to Q3 2025, but Tesla still had the $7,500 EV Tax Credit to use to help incentivize consumers to pick an EV.

A small decrease of 2.1 percent is pretty telling because it shows Tesla does not need massive federal credits to convince consumers to purchase its vehicles.

It was also the company’s third-best performance all-time in terms of deliveries, trailing that of Q3 2025 with 497,099 deliveries and Q4 2024, when the company handed over 495,570 cars.

We reported several days ago that Tesla Showrooms across the United States were completely bare of inventory or unclaimed units. Many locations also removed Demo Drive units, which had been bought by customers looking to take delivery sooner.

Tesla showrooms picked clean ahead of Q3 end as demand looks strong

Energy Generation

Tesla’s Energy Generation performance in Q3 was also very strong, as the company deployed 13.7 GWh of energy storage over the past three months. The only quarter when Tesla reported stronger energy deployment figures was Q4 2025, when 14.2 GWh of energy storage was deployed.

Tesla’s Q3 performance in energy generation has continued to grow each quarter, with the company increasing its deployments by ten-fold since Q3 2021, when just 1.3 GWh was deployed.

It is also nearly double what it was in Q3 2024, when the company reported 6.9 GWh. This is one of Tesla’s quickest-growing divisions, and it flies under the radar with fans and analysts, as many are focused on self-driving or the vehicles themselves.

Tesla Stock

Shares rose 5.07 percent to $372.06 at just after 10 a.m. on the East Coast. This is a rarity for Tesla after a strong delivery report, as positive news usually brings the stock down. Many quarters with extremely robust delivery reports have not been as kind to the Teslanaires of the world.

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Elon Musk

Elon Musk and Trump are closer than ever, and Tesla could be the big winner

Elon Musk sat beside Trump as AI leaders signed a voluntary White House safety accord.

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Elon Musk had the seat right next to President Donald Trump on Tuesday as the White House hosted the leaders of America’s biggest artificial intelligence companies for a lunch that ended with a voluntary industry accord on AI safety.

A seating chart Trump posted on Truth Social placed Musk at the president’s left in the East Room, with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on his right, according to an Associated Press reporter. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI President Greg Brockman, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Google’s Sundar Pichai, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos also attended, along with Vice President JD Vance and House Speaker Mike Johnson.

After the lunch, Trump told reporters outside the West Wing that the executives had signed “The White House Accord on Superintelligence: A Joint Commitment on Frontier SI Responsibilities.” Johnson described it as a voluntary statement of principles built on “robust internal controls and layers of internal and external review,” while Zuckerberg said company boards would independently review reports from outside auditors. Trump called the document “morally binding,” said he would name a new AI czar within days, and signed an executive order formally renaming artificial intelligence “super intelligence,” CNBC reported.

Musk was not in the room for Tesla alone. Since SpaceX absorbed xAI, he runs the company behind Grok and one of the largest AI training operations anywhere. On September 25, he said another 220,000 Nvidia GB300 chips would come online at Colossus 2 within a week, with more expected in November and December.

SpaceX confirms third massive compute deal at Colossus data center

 

Musk also used the trip to restate his energy ambitions. “SpaceX is aiming together with Tesla to do 200 gigawatts of solar production per year,” he said at an event in Washington. It is the same combined target he laid out that feeds directly into Terafab, the Tesla and SpaceX chip venture that will need enormous amounts of power.

The showing between Musk and Trump has come a long way, since the two had the very public split in mid 2025 after Musk opposed the “Big Beautiful Bill” and left DOGE. They reconciled at Charlie Kirk’s memorial that September, and Trump later called their relationship “good”. Since then, Musk has joined Trump’s China delegation in May and attended last week’s White House state dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping.

For Tesla, that access to government official could pay dividends. As Teslarati noted in January, federal autonomy rules, NHTSA oversight and a single national standard for driverless vehicles all run through an administration Musk can more easily reach directly as Tesla works to scale Robotaxi and Cybercab beyond Texas.

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