Investor's Corner
Tesla short-seller goes long on TSLA: “The story has become too compelling to ignore”
Tesla stock (NASDAQ:TSLA) is up more than 5% on Tuesday’s intraday amidst news that prominent activist short-seller Andrew Left of Citron Research, who currently has a lawsuit against Elon Musk over his “funding secured” tweet last August, has gone long on the electric car maker. In a recent note published on Tuesday, Citron noted that it is reversing its opinion on Tesla because the company’s story has “become too compelling to ignore.”
Citron Research states that while mainstream media had been largely focused on Elon Musk’s “eccentric, outlandish and at times offensive behavior,” it has failed to notice that the auto industry is currently being disrupted by Tesla, particularly the Model 3. Left notes that simply speaking, “Tesla is destroying the competition,” as shown by the dominance of the Model 3 in the United States’ midsize luxury car market and the Model S’ reign in the large luxury car segment.
“It is in that spirit, and with a great deal of analysis and due diligence that we can say for the first time, Citron is long Tesla as the Model 3 is a proven hit, and many of the TSLA warning signs have proven not to be significant.”
A key driver of Citron’s turnaround for Tesla is the lack of legitimate competitors in the premium electric car segment. In his classic bold fashion, Left noted that when it comes to electric vehicle sales in the United States, “it looks like it is the competition that is taking the Ambien.” Citron further stated that a deep dive into vehicle sales data reveals that the Model 3’s demand is new this year, and that it’s pulling directly from Tesla’s competitors. Left also pointed out that the declining sales figures of Tesla’s competitors at a time when the Model 3 is being ramped show that consumers seem to be moving away from legacy brands.
“People who are making their current car choices are moving away from other brands. – It is not just pent-up demand from people on the reservation list. If it were pent-up demand, those car classes wouldn’t be exhibiting such sharp declines year over year. TSLA is not just pulling customers from BMW and Mercedes but also from Toyota and Honda. Like a magic trick, while everyone is focused on Elon smoking weed, he is quietly smoking the whole automotive industry.”
Ultimately, Citron Research notes that it would not wish to be short TSLA at this point in the company’s history. Even if Tesla does not meet its profitability goals this Q3, Citron states that the company’s Gigafactory 3 project in Shanghai, the impending entrance of the Model 3 to the European market, Gigafactory 4 in Europe, the upcoming Tesla Semi and Model Y, and the rollout of the company’s first autonomous features with later iterations of Software V9, could allow the electric car maker to be added to the S&P 500 sometime next year.
Apart from the dominance of Tesla’s electric cars in their respective segments, Left also states that recent moves by the company’s largest shareholders suggest confidence in TSLA’s future. Among these are T Rowe Price, Baillie Gifford, and Fidelity — all of which are sticking with the company despite the controversies surrounding Elon Musk. T Rowe Price even increased its stake on Tesla in Q3, buying 5.5 million shares last quarter.
“Tesla is dominating the industry with no advertising, no unions, no dealer network. Tesla has the most miles driven data by several orders of magnitude. No tequila, flamethrowers, or short shorts- just a revolution in the transportation industry.”
Citron Research points out that it is still pushing through with its case against Elon Musk over his “funding secured” tweet last August. Nevertheless, Left admitted that while he is not a fan of Tesla’s “overconfident CEO, (Citron) cannot dismiss what we are seeing in the marketplace.”
Tesla has been showing signs that it is hitting its stride with the Model 3 production ramp — an endeavor that has cost the company and its CEO greatly. The company’s struggle to bring the Model 3 to market — aptly dubbed by the CEO as “manufacturing hell” — has been described by Elon Musk as one of the most painful and difficult experiences he’s ever had in his career. Tesla appears to have hit its stride in Q3, though, producing a total of 80,142 electric cars including 53,239 Model 3, as well as delivering a total of 83,500 vehicles, comprised of 55,840 Model 3, 14,470 Model S, and 13,190 Model X.
Since then, Tesla has been exhibiting signs that its production ramp for the Model 3 is going smoothly. This October has seen multiple large batches of VIN registrations this month so far, and the company has also unveiled a new variant of the Model 3 aimed at more budget-conscious reservation holders. Tesla has also announced that its Q3 2018 earnings call will be held this Wednesday, October 24, 2018, at 3:30 p.m. Pacific Time (6:30 p.m. Eastern Time). As noted by Citron in its note, the last time Tesla held an earnings call on an October, “revenue beat the consensus by 21%.”
As of writing, Tesla stock is up 5.85% at $276.22 per share.
Disclosure: I have no ownership in shares of TSLA and have no plans to initiate any positions within 72 hours.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) reported its earnings for the first quarter of 2026 on Wednesday afternoon. Here’s what the company reported compared to what Wall Street analysts expected.
The earnings results come after Tesla reported a massive beat on vehicle deliveries for the second quarter, delivering 489,126 vehicles and building 451,758 cars during the three-month span.
This was a major shock for those on Wall Street as they anticipated somewhere around 400,000 deliveries for the quarter, and showed Tesla still has plenty of demand for its vehicles around the world and in the U.S. despite losing the $7,500 EV Tax Credit last year.
Tesla Q2 2026 Earnings Results
- Non-GAAP EPS – $0.33 reported vs. $0.53 expected
- Revenues – $28.236 billion reported vs. $26.4 billion expected
- Free Cash Flow- -$1.092B
- Profit -$ 4.751B
Tesla (beat/missed) analyst expectations, so the market response to the company’s quarter is what we will look for next.
Tesla shares closed today down just over 1 percent, trading at $374.01.
In the past, it has been anyone’s guess with what Tesla shares will do after they report earnings. Strong quarters have resulted in sharp drops, while lackluster quarters have seen the stock shoot up considerably.
Tesla will hold its Q2 2026 Earnings Call in about 90 minutes at 5:30 p.m. on the East Coast. Remarks will be made by CEO Elon Musk and other executives, who will shed some light on the investor questions that we covered earlier this week.
You can stream it below. Additionally, we will be doing our Live Blog on X and Facebook.
Q2 2026 Earnings Call https://t.co/zZS6ii2TWK
— Tesla (@Tesla) July 22, 2026
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) will report its earnings for the second quarter of 2026 this evening after market close, and investors and analysts are waiting anxiously to see what the company will report for the second three-month span of the year.
Analysts have already put out their expectations from a financial standpoint for the company’s second quarter, but what’s unknown is what Tesla plans to discuss during the call.
Financial Expectations
Wall Street consensus expectations put Tesla’s Earnings Per Share (EPS) at $0.53, while revenues are expected to come in around $26.4 billion.
This would compare to an EPS of $0.39 and $22.19 billion compared to Tesla’s Q2 2025. Last quarter, EPS came in at $0.41 on $22.387 billion of revenue. Additionally in Q1, Tesla beat analyst expectations, but shares dropped over 3 percent the following trading day.
What We Expect
In terms of discussions, Tesla earnings are pretty sporadic and depend on a handful of things, including current events, investor questions, and more.
Tesla uses a platform called Say to field questions from investors and analysts. These questions are what will be used during the call. Here are the top 5 from the Retail side and top 3 from the Institutional side:
Retail:
“Tesla has missed short-term guidance on robotaxi 3 earnings reports in a row, from 50% coverage of USA by end of 2025 to most recently 7 new cities in 1H26. What is keeping Tesla back from accomplishing these short term goals that they’ve set for themselves?”
“What are the main constraints to expanding robotaxi operations faster, and how do you see that lining up with Cybercab production?”
“What’s the current status of Optimus Gen 3 production ramp, initial deployment in factories, and external sales timeline/volume for 2027? What tasks can we expect the Optimus to perform by end of 2027?”
“To reward long-term Tesla retail shareholders for their loyalty, can you commit to achieving at least half of the goals outlined in your 2025 compensation plan before considering any offers to acquire or merge Tesla?”
“Why has growth of robotaxi vehicles stalled? When will we see cybercab start customer rides?”
Institutional
“Previously, you’ve said Tesla would lead the R&D while SpaceX would lead production for Terafab. Can you provide an update on how that division of responsibilities is evolving, and any additional clarity on the expected capital contributions from Tesla and SpaceX?”
“For autonomous driving, Tesla’s fleet created a huge data advantage by collecting billions of real-world miles. That advantage doesn’t yet exist for Optimus. How should we think about data availability and its impact on Optimus development?”
“Why is it necessary to limit robotaxi operations within specific zones within cities to start? Will every city have to be rolled out this way?”
Tesla will report earnings for Q2 this evening with the Shareholder Deck at 4 p.m. ET, with the call starting around 5:30 p.m. ET.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk handed Grok something no other AI company can get their hands on
Elon Musk says SpaceX will feed engineering data into Grok’s next model, avoiding restricted material.
Elon Musk said Tuesday that SpaceX will feed its internal engineering data into the next major training run for Grok, the AI model now folded into SpaceX following February’s merger. In a post on X, Musk wrote that SpaceX’s “massive corpus of world-class engineering data,” excluding anything restricted under U.S. arms export law, will be added during supplemental training of what he called the “2T run,” a reference to a roughly two trillion parameter model that would nearly double the parameters behind the latest Grok 4.5 that’s rolling out.
SpaceX’s massive corpus of world-class engineering data (excluding material blocked by ITAR) will be added during supplemental training of the 2T run.
This will dramatically improve Grok’s engineering capabilities. https://t.co/BbQEViFByn
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 21, 2026
The excluded material that Musk is referring to would fall under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), which restricts export of technical data tied to defense and space hardware. That likely rules out propulsion specifics for Merlin and Raptor engines along with guidance and control details for SpaceX’s launch vehicles, but leaves manufacturing knowledge, materials science, and Starlink hardware design on the table.
The announcement extends a pattern that has been building since SpaceX’s Nasdaq debut in June, when the company went public with Grok and xAI’s Colossus supercomputer folded into the pitch to investors.
Days after that listing, SpaceX closed its $60 billion all stock acquisition of coding startup Cursor, giving xAI both enterprise software distribution and a stream of real world developer data to train on. Grok 4.5 launched July 8 running partly on that Cursor training data, with Musk describing it as roughly comparable to Anthropic’s Opus 4.7 but faster and cheaper to run.
Feeding SpaceX’s own engineering data into the next AI model follows the same logic Musk has applied across xAI’s sister companies. Tesla supplies real world driving data and manufacturing expertise, X supplies conversational data, and now SpaceX supplies aerospace engineering data built up since 2002.
Musk did not give a release date for the upcoming AI model, referred to elsewhere as Grok 4.6. He has said the two trillion parameter run is in its final training phase and expected to wrap this week.
Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results: miss on EPS, beat on revenue
Tesla is about to make parking in busy lots less stressful than ever
