Investor's Corner
Tesla Q4 Earnings is ‘one of the most important’ for Elon Musk and Co.
Tesla’s (NASDAQ: TSLA) fourth-quarter earnings call is being described as “one of the most important” for CEO Elon Musk and Co. by an analyst.
Wedbush’s Dan Ives describes tomorrow’s earnings as crucial, especially based on Musk’s potential comments regarding 2023 delivery targets, automotive gross margins, and overall outlook for the company moving forward.
While every quarter is important for Tesla we would highlight tomorrow’s call/guidance commentary as one of the most important moments in the history of Tesla and for Musk. Delivery targets for 2023 (1.8 mm the bogey), Auto gross margins, and Musk commentary/outlook key tmrw
— Dan Ives (@DivesTech) January 24, 2023
Tesla’s 2023 Delivery Targets
After delivering a million units in a year for the first time in 2022, with 1.313 million cars delivered globally, Tesla is still going to be looking for year-over-year growth.
“Over a multi-year horizon we expect to achieve 50% average annual growth in vehicle deliveries,” Tesla wrote in its Q3 2022 earnings shareholder deck. “The rate of growth will depend on our equipment capacity, factory uptime, operational efficiency, and the capacity and stability of the supply chain.”
This was a 40 percent increase from 2021 figures. However, it is not necessarily straightforward.
Tesla dealt with some production shutdowns last year in Shanghai, its biggest contributor to global manufacturing for the past two years. With ramp-ups continuing at Berlin, and products like the Cybertruck expected to launch this year in Texas, along with surges in demand thanks to price decreases, Tesla is sure to see growth this year. However, Ives seems interested in what Musk’s synopsis of the full year could be.
Automotive Gross Margins
After Tesla cut prices globally by as much as $13,000 in the United States and 13 percent in other markets, consumers felt the positives as the cars became more affordable. However, from an investor standpoint, it is much more complicated.
Tesla had the third-best operating margins globally, trailing only Ferrari and BMW. In Q3, the company posted 27.9 percent automotive gross margins, which was unchanged from Q2 but a decrease from the 32.9 percent the company posted in Q1.
Price cuts from Tesla were seen as a way to trigger global demand, which many analysts felt the company was battling against as more competitors entered the EV sector. However, Tesla had raised prices many times over the past two years due to supply chain issues. It seems, while the automaker was making so much per unit, consumers were still looking for an affordable yet competitive EV option from the company.
Overall Outlook for 2023
Perhaps the biggest question on the minds of Tesla investors, especially the company’s “permabulls,” is whether Musk’s attention will remain fixated on Tesla or Twitter. While his acquisition of the social media platform has seemed to take up much of Musk’s time, he has recently solidified that Tesla is the priority.
This has not alleviated the drop the stock felt last year, as Tesla shares dropped over 60 percent in 2022. Slightly recovering so far in 2023 with a 32 percent increase in value so far this year, investors will likely want to know what Musk’s overall plans are for Tesla, and what his potential level of commitment will be.
Many are still questioning how the CEO is splitting his time between the two companies. However, with Tesla expecting to ramp up several projects this year, including a new Semi production facility and the aforementioned Cybertruck, Musk could have his hand in more of the Tesla pie through 2023 than he did in late 2022.
Ives said in a note to investors:
“Tesla is Musk and Musk is Tesla. With all the worries about Musk’s attention on Twitter, selling Tesla stock, name a new Twitter CEO, and other noise created by this ongoing soap opera….this is a key moment of truth for Musk. Elon needs to give investors comfort around this tight wire balancing act and reiterate his goals for the year and lay out the strategic vision despite a near-term dark macro. Musk is not shy about his negative view of the economy, but how does that weave in with Tesla’s outlook? Also Musk giving some insight into the China situation, Twitter situation will be in the bright spotlight for the Street.”
Wedbush has a $175 price target and maintained its Outperform rating. The firm said it “ultimately believe[s] tomorrow’s call/guidance will be one of the most important moments in Tesla’s (and Musk’s) history.”
Disclosure: Joey Klender is a TSLA Shareholder.
I’d love to hear from you! If you have any comments, concerns, or questions, please email me at joey@teslarati.com. You can also reach me on Twitter @KlenderJoey, or if you have news tips, you can email us at tips@teslarati.com.
Elon Musk
SpaceX (SPCX) IPO is live today at $135: Here’s exactly what you need to know
SpaceX priced its historic IPO at $135 per share today, raising a record $75 billion.
SpaceX officially priced its initial public offering at $135 per share, offering 555,555,555 shares of Class A common stock and raising $75 billion in what is the largest IPO in stock market history. Shares are set to begin trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market on Friday, June 12, under the ticker symbol SPCX. The previous record holder was Saudi Aramco’s 2019 offering at $29 billion, followed by Alibaba’s $22 billion offering in 2014.
At $135 per share and roughly 555.6 million shares, the implied valuation sits near $1.75 trillion, which would make SpaceX roughly the seventh largest company in the United States, just above Tesla’s current market cap. Regular investors can request shares at the IPO price through Robinhood, Fidelity, Charles Schwab, SoFi, and E*TRADE, though the deal is heavily oversubscribed and most retail allocations will be partial or unfilled. Once trading opens June 12, anyone with a brokerage account can buy SPCX on the open market.
SpaceX’s amended S-1 is sparking a major Tesla merger conversation
The valuation is anchored primarily by Starlink. Starlink crossed 10 million subscribers as of February 2026 and is adding 750,000 to 1.5 million new users per month, with the connectivity segment already posting a $1.19 billion profit last quarter. The offering also bundles in xAI following SpaceX’s all-stock merger earlier this year, adding Grok and the Colossus supercomputer to the investment thesis. As Teslarati reported, Starlink ended 2025 with $10 billion in revenue, a figure analysts project could reach $24 billion by end of 2026.
Wedbush analyst Dan Ives has been vocal in his support. “I think the time is right,” Ives said, adding that the offering expands the Elon Musk ecosystem rather than competing with Tesla. An average 12-month price target of $165 per share represents roughly 22% upside from the IPO price. Not everyone agrees – Motley Fool noted xAI is spending $1 billion per month playing catch-up to OpenAI and Anthropic.
Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 with a single stated purpose. “Elon founded SpaceX with a goal to change humanity, to make us a multi-planet species,” CFO Bret Johnsen said in the company’s retail roadshow video this week. Musk himself has been more direct: “We are building the systems and technologies necessary to provide global connectivity on Earth and beyond, to understand the true nature of the universe, and to extend the light of consciousness to the stars.”
Investor's Corner
Tesla unfolded its first European “folding Supercharger”
Tesla’s folding Supercharger just arrived in Europe and it changes how fast charging expands.
Tesla’s Folding Unit Supercharger has officially landed in Europe, with the company teasing a new installation in its effort for a broader rollout targeting major motorway rest stops across the European continent in Q3 2026. The arrival marks a notable shift in how Tesla is thinking about network expansion, moving from hardware performance alone to engineering the logistics chain itself.
While Tesla did not reveal the exact location for the new folding Supercharger in Europe, the photo shared on X heavily suggests that this maybe somewhere in Norway. Historically, whenever Tesla rolls out an entirely new infrastructure architecture in Europe, whether it was the original Supercharger stalls years ago or these brand-new modular V4 “Folding Units”, Norway is almost always the designated launch pad because of its unmatched EV adoption rate and supportive infrastructure
The Folding Unit, introduced in March 2026, is a factory pre-assembled V4 charging station built on an industrial hinge system mounted to a heavy-duty concrete base. The entire assembly arrives on site ready to unfold and connect. Tesla confirmed the units feature telescopic light poles specifically designed for easy transportation and fast on-site deployment, a detail that signals how carefully the logistics chain has been engineered alongside the hardware itself. The design allows 33% more stalls per delivery truck, cuts installation time roughly in half, and reduces overall deployment costs by more than 20% compared to traditional installations.
Tesla’s newest “Folding V4 Superchargers” are key to its most aggressive expansion yet
Tesla also noted telescopic light poles which provide benefits over traditional Supercharger installations that require fixed-height poles that are awkward to ship, slow to position on site, and often require separate crews and equipment to erect before charging hardware can even be staged. By engineering poles that compress for transit and extend on arrival, Tesla has removed one of the quieter bottlenecks in the physical deployment process. Every hour saved on a light pole installation is an hour redirected toward getting stalls energized. At scale, across dozens of new sites per quarter, those hours add up to a meaningful acceleration in how quickly a location goes from approved permit to serving its first customer.
Each Folding Unit pairs a single V4 power cabinet with eight charging posts. The V4 cabinet delivers up to 500 kW per stall for passenger vehicles and up to 1.2 MW for the Tesla Semi, supporting twice the stalls per cabinet at three times the power density of its predecessor. Longer cables make every new station immediately usable by non-Tesla vehicles, a priority as Tesla continues opening its network to Ford, GM, Rivian, Hyundai, Stellantis, and others.
As Teslarati reported when the Folding Unit was first unveiled, Tesla’s Gigafactory New York produced its final V3 Supercharger cabinet in March 2026 after more than seven years and 15,000 units, completing a full pivot to V4 production. The European arrival of the folding design is the next chapter in that transition.
Faster and cheaper deployment means Tesla can justify building in markets and corridors that were previously too expensive to serve, filling the coverage gaps that have slowed EV adoption outside major urban centers.
First Folding Unit Superchargers in Europe 🇪🇺 https://t.co/KNfYWJukkL pic.twitter.com/YR1udIpH1i
— Tesla Charging (@TeslaCharging) June 10, 2026
Investor's Corner
Tesla Full Self-Driving hits Level 4? One analyst says yes
Tesla Full Self-Driving (Supervised) is currently listed as a Level 2 suite in terms of its passenger cars. As its Robotaxi platform continues to move quickly, it has been recognized as a Level 4 ride-sharing program by the State of Texas, as Tesla recently self-certified itself.
However, a Wall Street analyst is arguing that Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) has effectively achieved Level 4 autonomy in most conditions in all of its vehicles, drawing on personal experience and data released by the company.
Alex Potter of Piper Sandler said in a note to investors on Wednesday that “Tesla has solved the self-driving puzzle,” pointing to decisions to offer insurance discounts for FSD-enabled policies as a signal of confidence, which is backed up by stellar safety records compared to human driving.
Investing.com initially reported on Potter’s new note.
Additionally, Potter looks at the recent start of Cybercab production at Giga Texas as a potential indication that Tesla is ready to offer some level of unsupervised driving at least in the near future. The Cybercab has no steering wheel or pedals, completely eliminating the ability for human input.
He also sees Tesla’s allocation of “several hundred million USD (if not $1B+)” as confidence internally, seeing as it would be tough to set aside that amount of capital toward a project that the company does not see as relatively near-term.
Forward thinking, especially as Cybercab has no human controls, it would make sense that Tesla is at least close to self-driving. How close is another question.
Tesla has routinely teased that unsupervised FSD is close, but there are still a lot of things it feels as if the company has to roll out some more capability, including unsupervised parking features, known as “Banish,” better operation with regional self-driving performance, and other improvements.
That is not to say that Tesla FSD is super impressive already. It has already completed coast-to-coast drives across the United States and Canada, it routinely takes the stress out of driving for most people, and it has proven through Tesla Safety Reports that it is safer and involved in accidents less frequently than humans.
🚨 These are the first-ever FSD safety statistics out of the Netherlands, showing it was over 3.5x safer than human driving on Dutch roads.
The most recent numbers out of Tesla for North America show:
-Over 5.5 million miles between accidents for Teslas using FSD
-660k miles… https://t.co/XKlRzgSGEh pic.twitter.com/HX6kzh0ZKc— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) June 9, 2026
Even Potter believes it is capable, as he used it to go from Missoula, Montana, to Minneapolis, Minnesota, back in April.
“There’s no substitute for personal experience,” he wrote.