Investor's Corner
Tesla’s strong Q3 financials catalyze price target increases from analysts
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) posted an incredibly strong third quarter last evening during its Earnings Call, making remarkable strides on its financials to extend its profitable quarters streak to nine. Analysts at numerous Wall Street firms are upgrading their price targets on Tesla stock following the company’s strong numbers and positive outlook moving forward as it intends to ramp its Texas and Berlin Gigafactories in the coming months.
Wedbush – Dan Ives
Starting with some of Tesla’s most notable bulls, Wedbush’s Daniel Ives boosted his price target to $1,100 from $1,000 while maintaining an Outperform rating. “Last night, Tesla delivered solid top-line results which were in-line with expectations and speaks to a new Tesla margin story going forward,” Ives wrote to investors. “Auto GM was 30%+ and roughly 250 bps ahead of Street expectations which highlights the massive leverage in the Tesla story now starting to take hold with Giga China front and center as Tesla is on an EBITDA run-rate of roughly $13 billion, a staggering number given the company is still in the early stages of building out its global EV moat.”
Tesla’s demand increases, which have resulted in delivery estimates extending well into 2022 are going to be handled by Giga Berlin and Giga Texas. “We believe EV demand is outstripping supply for Tesla by roughly 30k units and the chip shortage has clearly amplified this dynamic with wait times for Model Y and some Model 3’s extending into the spring for current orders,” Ives said. “However, big supply help is on the way for Musk & Co. as the long the awaited Gigafactory hubs in Austin and Berlin are set to have are set to have the ribbon cut over the coming months and should expand Tesla’s capacity to roughly 2 million units annually over the next 18 months.
Ives has a $1,500 price target for Tesla’s bull case, up from the $1,300 target he previously held. TipRanks has Ives ranked 18 out of 7,705 analysts, with an average return of 37.5% and a success rate of 79%.
Canaccord Genuity – Jed Dorsheimer
Dorsheimer raised his price target from $940 to $1,040 while maintaining a Buy rating. “Post Tesla’s 3Q21, we are maintaining our BUY rating and increasing out PT to $1,040, which is based on 45x our ’24 Adj. EBITDA estimate of $25.9B (previously $940 based on 55x of $19B). We are bullish on the auto gross margin expansion, and remain excited for battery constraints to abate and be reallocated to energy products later in 2022,” Dorsheimer wrote. “After reporting record delivery numbers a few weeks ago, a beat may have been priced in and shares could see a ‘buy the rumor, sell the news’ type pull back. We would be buyers at these levels and if any pullback occurs.”
TipRanks has Dorsheimer ranked 210 out of 7,705 analysts, with an average return of 32.9% and a success rate of 56%.
Deutsche Bank – Emmanuel Rosner
Rosner raised his price target on Tesla from $900 to $1,000, maintaining his Buy rating. The impressive measure of automotive gross margins was indicative of a strong operational performance, despite industry challenges like semiconductor and parts shortages.
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“Tesla reported particularly strong 3Q21 operating performance, delivering its highest auto gross margins since Model 3 was introduced, despite minimal S+X volume and higher supply chain costs, and impressive GAAP operating margin of 14.6% (18.4% ex-SBC), surpassing even its long-term company targets,” Rosner wrote. Tesla also stated that, despite its low volume, the Model S has returned to profitability.
“While revenue came in somewhat below expectations, this was driven mainly by lower regulatory credit and services/other contributions, while auto revenue was more in-line. We leave our 2021E deliveries unchanged at 845k, but take up our auto GM (ex credit) to nearly 27% from <26%, and EPS to $6.45 (from $6.20 previously).”
Rosner holds a ranking of 1,339 out of 7,705 analysts with a 57% success rate and an average return of 14.3%, according to TipRanks.
Disclosure: Joey Klender is a TSLA Shareholder.
SpaceX just picked up another $1.6 billion from the Pentagon, with the U.S. Space Force awarding two task orders worth $1.6 billion to fly 18 Falcon 9 missions from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California through the end of 2027. The launches will carry satellites for the Space Based Sensing and Targeting portfolio, a set of programs meant to help the military detect and track airborne threats and relay that information across forces in near real time.
The award falls under National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 1, the Space Force’s faster, commercial style procurement track for missions that do not require the military’s most demanding certification process. It is also the largest single order publicly disclosed under that program so far, and the first task order issued since the Space Force nearly tripled Lane 1’s contract ceiling from $5.6 billion to $17 billion on July 17.
SpaceX to become America’s Military data backbone for missiles, drones, and warfighters
Eric Zarybnisky, the Space Force’s acting portfolio acquisition executive for space access, said the entire process, from identifying the requirement to signing the contract, took about two months, including a month set aside for companies to prepare proposals.
SpaceX is not just launching these satellites. It already holds the contracts to build two of the programs within the same portfolio, $4.16 billion for the Space Based Airborne Moving Target Indicator system and $2.29 billion for the Space Data Network Backbone, which Teslarati covered in May. That means SpaceX is now responsible for both building key pieces of the military’s next generation sensing network and getting them into orbit.
With this latest award, SpaceX’s Pentagon contract total for 2026 alone tops $8 billion, adding to a defense portfolio that already includes the Golden Dome missile defense software group SpaceX joined in April and a string of GPS launches it inherited after ULA’s Vulcan rocket ran into a booster anomaly, which we detailed in March.
Lane 1’s vendor pool technically includes seven companies: SpaceX, ULA, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, Stoke Space, Impulse Space, and Relativity Space. In practice, SpaceX remains the only provider with the combination of launch cadence, flight proven Falcon 9 hardware, and West Coast infrastructure to support a campaign requiring roughly one Vandenberg launch a month for the next year and a half.
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Some lawmakers have flagged the growing concentration of national security launches with one company as a risk worth watching. For now, the Space Force keeps backing SpaceX, with it being the company that shows up ready to launch.
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.
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