Investor's Corner
Tesla Q3 Earnings tempers analysts outlook as price targets lower
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) Earnings tempered analyst outlooks on the electric automaker’s stock as one firm referred to the call as a “mini disaster,” and another questioned whether shares could be looked at from a growth perspective as CEO Elon Musk advised investors that the company would take a cautious attitude toward the future with uncertain macroeconomic conditions.
Tesla’s Q3 2023 Earnings Call was one of the most cautious and perhaps worrisome in years as the automaker admitted high-interest rates and future projects could yield what would be looked at as less-than-favorable for short-term investors.
Long-term Tesla permabulls could not be shaken from their firm stance that the company is set for monumental growth moving forward, and how could they? Musk continued to speak positively about overall growth for Tesla in terms of autonomy, AI, and cell production.
However, analysts are adjusting their 12-month price targets on the stock as Musk’s tone during the call was cautious and aware of the rough waters that lie ahead.
“I’m not saying things will be bad. I’m just saying they might be,” Musk said during the Call. “And I think like Tesla is an incredibly capable ship, but we need to make sure like as…if the macroeconomic conditions are stormy, even if the best ship is still going to have tough times. The weaker ships will sink.”
Musk acknowledged the rough waters that likely lie ahead for the Tesla ship, and waves will consist of high-interest rate environments, which will temper demand for its vehicles as consumers struggle to keep up with inflation and lengthy waits for Cybertruck to contribute positive cash flow for the company.
“We have seen the highest highs and some very challenging times from Tesla and Musk over the last decade, with last night’s quarter and conference call not an inspiring one for the bulls,” Wedbush’s Dan Ives wrote in a note.
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“In a nutshell, we would characterize last night’s conference call as a ‘mini disaster’ as the Street wanted to get their arms around the falling margins and constant price cuts seen globally, but instead, we heard from a much more cautious Musk which focused on higher interest rates, FSD/AI investments, and highlighting the difficult path for Cybertruck production over the next 12 to 18 months.”
Ives pushed Wedbush’s price target on Tesla down to $310 from $350, citing a “more cautionary near-term dynamic for Musk & Co.”
Adam Jonas of Morgan Stanley shared similar sentiments, adjusting his price target from $400 to $380.
“How can we be overweight [on] Tesla despite the company’s caution on macro, consumer, Cybertruck and Mexico? Can a ‘growth stock’ work if earnings don’t grow in 2024?” he wrote.
Jonas and fellow Morgan Stanley associates characterized the call as “one of the most cautious Tesla conference calls we’ve heard in years.”
Musk announced that not only would Cybertruck confront Tesla with “enormous challenges” in terms of the initial production ramp and becoming cash flow positive, but that Gigafactory Mexico won’t be a “full tilt” effort until the global economic outlook becomes more stable.
It was not all bad. Model Y is trending to be the best-selling car in terms of revenue and unit value, Autopilot has driven over 500 million miles with Full Self-Driving beta, and energy storage was robust for the quarter. Cybertruck even got a date for the first deliveries, November 30.
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However, analysts advise investors to be more cautious as Tesla will have more challenges over the next year. As Tesla is not immune to ones that will impact the global markets, and Musk’s cautionary tone for the Call was indicative of the tumultuous waters the automaker will face moving into 2024 and beyond.
Disclosure: Joey Klender owns Tesla stock.
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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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