Investor's Corner
Tesla’s Q4 and Full Year 2018 financial report and earnings call: What to expect
Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) is set to release its Q4 and Full Year 2018 financial results after markets close tomorrow, January 30. Following the release of its fourth-quarter and full-year financial results, the electric car maker is scheduled to hold its earnings call, which will begin at 2:30 p.m. Pacific Time (5:30 p.m. Eastern Time).
A lot is riding on Tesla’s results for the fourth quarter of 2018. To say that the past year has been challenging for the company is an understatement, with CEO Elon Musk describing the Model 3 ramp as one of the most difficult periods of his career. That said, despite a short-lived attempt at privatization, run-ins with the SEC, and clashes with mainstream media, Tesla surprised Wall Street on the third quarter when it posted a GAAP profit of $312 million. Since then, the company’s critics have been forced to change their narrative from “Tesla will never turn a profit” to “Tesla’s Q3 2018 results are as good as it ever will get.”
Elon Musk has proven to be quite conservative about Tesla’s fourth quarter results. In an email to employees earlier this month, Musk explained that Tesla’s third-quarter earnings were notably driven by a push to sell higher-priced variants of the Model 3 to North American customers. Musk noted that unaudited estimates point to Q4 2018 making a GAAP profit, though not as much as the third quarter.
With this in mind, here are a number of things to expect from tomorrow’s Q4 fourth-quarter and full-year 2018 financial results and earnings call.
Earnings
Analysts polled by FactSet have noted that they expect Tesla to report adjusted Q4 2018 earnings of $2.20 a share. This is a notable improvement over the fourth quarter of 2017, with its loss of $3.04 per share. GAAP earnings are expected to hit $1.23 a share, another notable turnaround from Q4 2017’s loss of $4.01. Estimize, a crowdsourced platform that aggregates estimates from analysts and other financial executives, notes that it expects Tesla to report an adjusted profit of $2.02 per share.
Revenue
FactSet surveys among analysts state that Tesla is expected to report revenue of $7.12 billion for Q4 2018, a notable improvement over the $3.29 billion from 2017’s fourth quarter. Estimize’s results are a bit more conservative at $7.03 billion.
Sustainability
If there is one thing that investors would be looking for in Tesla’s upcoming fourth-quarter and full-year 2018 financial report and earnings call, it would be the company’s capability to sustain its profitability. Tesla, for its part, has seemingly adopted contingencies to ensure this, from trimming its workforce by 7% to retiring the 75 kWh battery pack options for the Model S and X and concluding its long-running customer referral program.
Ultimately, if Tesla could successfully prove that its feat in the third quarter is sustainable, the company could definitively prove to investors that it would be profitable moving forward.
Product Roadmap
Tesla has a lot on its plate this 2019. The highly-anticipated Model Y SUV is expected to be unveiled sometime this year, and Elon Musk has teased that the Tesla pickup truck might be revealed as well. Apart from this, the company is aggressively ramping Solar Roof tiles production in Gigafactory 2. Lastly, Tesla is also expected to initiate the start of the Semi’s production, as announced during the vehicle’s unveiling.
Considering Tesla’s busy year, there is a good chance that Elon Musk and the company’s other executives would provide some updates on upcoming projects, such as the release of Hardware 3 and upcoming Autopilot features. Other pertinent updates for the company’s existing product lineup, such as a possible 2170 battery cell upgrade for the Model S and X, as well as the production of the $35,000 Model 3, might also be discussed.
As of writing, Tesla shares are trading at -0.82% at $293.95 per share.
Disclosure: I have no ownership in shares of TSLA and have no plans to initiate any positions within 72 hours.
Investor's Corner
Tesla gets tip of the hat from major Wall Street firm on self-driving prowess
“Tesla is at the forefront of autonomous driving, supported by a camera-only approach that is technically harder but much cheaper than the multi-sensor systems widely used in the industry. This strategy should allow Tesla to scale more profitably compared to Robotaxi competitors, helped by a growing data engine from its existing fleet,” BoA wrote.
Tesla received a tip of the hat from major Wall Street firm Bank of America on Wednesday, as it reinitiated coverage on Tesla shares with a bullish stance that comes with a ‘Buy’ rating and a $460 price target.
In a new note that marks a sharp reversal from its neutral position earlier in 2025, the bank declared Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) technology the “leading consumer autonomy solution.”
Analysts highlighted Tesla’s camera-only architecture, known as Tesla Vision, as a strategic masterstroke. While technically more challenging than the multi-sensor setups favored by rivals, the vision-based approach is dramatically cheaper to produce and maintain.
This cost edge, combined with Tesla’s rapidly expanding real-world data engine, positions the company to scale robotaxis far more profitably than competitors, BofA argues in the new note:
“Tesla is at the forefront of autonomous driving, supported by a camera-only approach that is technically harder but much cheaper than the multi-sensor systems widely used in the industry. This strategy should allow Tesla to scale more profitably compared to Robotaxi competitors, helped by a growing data engine from its existing fleet.”
The bank now attributes roughly 52% of Tesla’s total valuation to its Robotaxi ambitions. It also flagged meaningful upside from the Optimus humanoid robot program and the fast-growing energy storage business, suggesting the auto segment’s recent headwinds, including expired incentives, are being eclipsed by these higher-margin opportunities.
Tesla’s own data underscores exactly why Wall Street is waking up to FSD’s potential. According to Tesla’s official safety reporting page, the FSD Supervised fleet has now surpassed 8.4 billion cumulative miles driven.
Tesla FSD (Supervised) fleet passes 8.4 billion cumulative miles
That total ballooned from just 6 million miles in 2021 to 80 million in 2022, 670 million in 2023, 2.25 billion in 2024, and a staggering 4.25 billion in 2025 alone. In the first 50 days of 2026, owners added another 1 billion miles — averaging more than 20 million miles per day.
This avalanche of real-world, camera-captured footage, much of it on complex city streets, gives Tesla an unmatched training dataset. Every mile feeds its neural networks, accelerating improvement cycles that lidar-dependent rivals simply cannot match at scale.
Tesla owners themselves will tell you the suite gets better with every release, bringing new features and improvements to its self-driving project.
The $460 target implies roughly 15 percent upside from recent trading levels around $400. While regulatory and safety hurdles remain, BofA’s endorsement signals growing institutional conviction that Tesla’s data advantage is not hype; it’s a tangible moat already delivering billions of miles of proof.
Elon Musk
SpaceX IPO could push Elon Musk’s net worth past $1 trillion: Polymarket
The estimates were shared by the official Polymarket Money account on social media platform X.
Recent projections have outlined how a potential $1.75 trillion SpaceX IPO could generate historic returns for early investors. The projections suggest the offering would not only become the largest IPO in history but could also result in unprecedented windfalls for some of the company’s key investors.
The estimates were shared by the official Polymarket Money account on social media platform X.
As noted in a Polymarket Money analysis, Elon Musk invested $100 million into SpaceX in 2002 and currently owns approximately 42% of the company. At a $1.75 trillion valuation following SpaceX’s potential $1.75 trillion IPO, that stake would be worth roughly $735 billion.
Such a figure would dramatically expand Musk’s net worth. When combined with his holdings in Tesla Inc. and other ventures, a public debut at that level could position him as the world’s first trillionaire, depending on market conditions at the time of listing.
The Bloomberg Billionaires Index currently lists Elon Musk with a net worth of $666 billion, though a notable portion of this is tied to his TSLA stock. Tesla currently holds a market cap of $1.51 trillion, and Elon Musk’s currently holds about 13% to 15% of the company’s outstanding common stock.
Founders Fund, co-founded by Peter Thiel, invested $20 million in SpaceX in 2008. Polymarket Money estimates the firm owns between 1.5% and 3% of the private space company. At a $1.75 trillion valuation, that range would translate to approximately $26.25 billion to $52.5 billion in value.
That return would represent one of the most significant venture capital outcomes in modern Silicon Valley history, with a growth of 131,150% to 262,400%.
Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company, invested $900 million into SpaceX in 2015 and is estimated to hold between 6% and 7% of the private space firm. At the projected IPO valuation, that stake could be worth between $105 billion and $122.5 billion. That’s a growth of 11,566% to 14,455%.
Other major backers highlighted in the post include Fidelity Investments, Baillie Gifford, Valor Equity Partners, Bank of America, and Andreessen Horowitz, each potentially sitting on multibillion-dollar gains.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk hints Tesla investors will be rewarded heavily
“Hold onto your Tesla stock. It’s going to be worth a lot, I think. That’s my bet,” Musk said.
Elon Musk recently hinted that he believes Tesla investors will be rewarded heavily if they continue to hold onto their shares, and he reiterated that in a new interview that the company released on its social accounts this week.
Musk is one of the most successful CEOs in the modern era and has mammothed competitors on the Forbes Net Worth List over the past year as his holdings in his various companies have continued to swell.
Tesla investors, especially those who have been holding shares for several years, have also felt substantial gains in their portfolios. Over the past five years, the stock is up over 78 percent. Since February 2019, nearly seven years ago to the day, the stock is up over 1,800 percent.
Musk said in the interview:
“Hold onto your Tesla stock. It’s going to be worth a lot, I think. That’s my bet.”
Elon Musk in new interview: “Hold on to your $TSLA stock. It’s going to be worth a lot, I think. That’s my bet.” pic.twitter.com/cucirBuhq0
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) February 26, 2026
It’s no secret Musk has been extremely bullish on his own companies, but Tesla in particular, because it is publicly traded.
However, the company has so many amazing projects that have an opportunity to revolutionize their respective industries. There is certainly a path to major growth on Wall Street for Tesla through its various future projects, including Optimus, Cybercab, Semi, and Unsupervised FSD.
- Optimus (Tesla’s humanoid robot): Musk has discussed its potential for tasks like childcare, walking dogs, or assisting elderly parents, positioning it as a massive long-term driver of company value.
- Cybercab (Tesla’s robotaxi/autonomous ride-hailing vehicle): a fully autonomous vehicle geared specifically for Tesla’s ride-sharing ambitions.
- Semi (Tesla’s electric truck, with mentions of expansion, like in Europe): brings Tesla into the commercial logistics sector.
- Unsupervised FSD (Full Self-Driving software achieving full autonomy without human supervision): turns every Tesla owner’s vehicle into a fully-autonomous vehicle upon release
These projects specifically are some of the highest-growth pillars Tesla has ever attempted to develop, especially in Musk’s eyes, as he has said Optimus will be the best-selling product of all-time.
Many analysts agree, but the bullish ones, like Cathie Wood of ARK Invest, are perhaps the one who believes Tesla has incredible potential on Wall Street, predicting a $2,600 price target for 2030, but this is not even including Optimus.
She told Bloomberg last March that she believes that the project will present a potential additive if Tesla can scale faster than anticipated.