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Tesla (TSLA) momentum cools as investors await Q2 Model 3 production numbers

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Tesla stock (NASDAQ:TSLA) has experienced a roller coaster of a month this June, at one point almost coming within reach of its all-time high before plunging back 6.9% last week and settling at $333.63. As of June 22, Tesla had risen 25.4% quarter-to-date, making it one of the best-performing stock among automakers. Since then, however, the company’s shares have plunged ~10% amid reservations about the viability of the Model 3’s fourth assembly line and an ongoing lawsuit against a former employee.

Tesla has a huge week ahead, with the second quarter of 2018 ending this coming Saturday; and with it, its deadline to hit its goal of manufacturing 5,000 Model 3 per week. The all-elusive goal has hung over the Elon Musk-led company since the Model 3 started production mid-2017. This time, however, Tesla is closer to its target than ever before, thanks to another assembly line for the compact electric car set up in a massive sprung structure on the Fremont factory’s grounds. As the end of Q2 approaches, however, the Elon Musk-led company’s critics are upping the ante in their attempts to bring the electric car maker’s shares down.

Apart from expressing doubts about the company’s ability to scale the production of the Model 3, Tesla’s critics are now focusing on the feasibility of the compact electric car’s newest assembly line. Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. financial analyst Max Warburton, for one, called Tesla’s strategy “insanity,” citing the unusual nature of the tent-housed line. Investors’ sentiments also appear to have soured after the company filed a lawsuit against Martin Tripp, a former employee accused of hacking into the company’s manufacturing operating system, exporting confidential data to external entities, and misreporting to the media. Tripp is currently fighting back, claiming he was a whistleblower.

Recent signs, however, seem to be pointing in favor of Tesla. This weekend alone, photographs and videos of massive lots filled with the compact electric car emerged online. While the number of the vehicles spotted in these sightings is difficult to estimate, one thing is very clear — Tesla’s production numbers for the compact electric car for the second quarter of 2018 would be its most impressive yet.

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Just yesterday, John Totah, a Tesla employee working at Gigafactory 1, also posted a tweet suggesting that the company has managed to hit a production throughput of 5,000 units per week. Totah eventually set his Twitter profile on private, but not before he added a public comment stating that Tesla’s current lines for Gigafactory 1 in Nevada already have the potential to produce 6,000 Model 3 battery packs per week — a target that was mentioned in a leaked email from Elon Musk earlier this year. While Totah’s tweet does not directly translate to a production output of 5,000 Model 3 per week, knowing that Gigafactory 1 is manufacturing battery packs at a pace equivalent to the company’s Q2 2018 target bodes well for Tesla.

This Monday, Tesla battled to maintain its position, dropping only -0.19% and ending the day at $333.01. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, on the other hand, fell -1.33%, while the NASDAQ went down -2.09%.

As of Tuesday’s pre-market, Tesla is still standing firm, up 0.37% and trading at $334.25 per share.

Disclosure: I have no ownership in shares of TSLA and have no plans to initiate any positions within 72 hours.

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Simon is an experienced automotive reporter with a passion for electric cars and clean energy. Fascinated by the world envisioned by Elon Musk, he hopes to make it to Mars (at least as a tourist) someday. For stories or tips--or even to just say a simple hello--send a message to his email, simon@teslarati.com or his handle on X, @ResidentSponge.

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Investor's Corner

Tesla annihilates Wall Street expectations with strong Q2 delivery showing

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Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) beat Wall Street expectations of 406,000 vehicles delivered in Q2 by reporting 480,126 deliveries for the three months ending in June.

Tesla reported it delivered 467,762  Model 3 and Model Y units, while 12,364 Model S, Model X, and Cybertrucks switched hands during the quarter. The Model S and Model X were officially sunset this past quarter and will no longer be part of the company’s Production & Delivery reports moving forward.

The quarter is a pleasant surprise and a good rebound from Q1, when Tesla slightly missed the Wall Street consensus of 365,645 cars by reporting 358,023 deliveries for the first three motnhs of the year.

Energy storage deployments also provided some strength in Tesla’s delivery report, hitting 13.5 GWh for Q2. This is a particular division of Tesla’s business that has been overwhelmingly robust over the past few years, truly being a strong point of the company’s overall model.

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For the year, Tesla analysts still predict deliveries to trend in the 1.69 million unit region, a modest 3 to 5 percent increase from the 1.64 million cars the company delivered last year. Tesla will likely return to more sequential and noticeable year-over-year growth as the Cybercab project starts to ramp up considerably in the next few years.

Tesla has some other potential catalysts to spur vehicle deliveries, too. Not only is it expecting Cybercab to truly start making a change in the next few years, but other vehicles could be entering the company’s lineup.

Tesla sends production Cybercab with no steering wheel, pedals to on-road testing

The slightly longer Model Y L has been a highly speculated release candidate in the U.S. It has already done incredibly well in China, and U.S. buyers have been wanting slightly more interior space than the Model Y. Now that the Model X is gone, it is more needed than ever.

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Q2 highlights a pretty stable automotive division within Tesla, and no true concerns arise from these figures, especially considering it managed to beat expectations convincingly.

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Tesla gets its latest short from Michael Burry: ‘Happy it jumped back to this level’

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Credit: MarcoRP | X

Tesla short seller Michael Burry, the subject of the film “The Big Short,” where he was portrayed by Steve Carell, has revealed he has opened a new bet against the stock.

In a new update to his Substack newsletter in a post titled “Trading Post June 30, 2026,” Burry revealed a new set of bets against Tesla, Caterpillar, NVIDIA, Applied Materials Inc., and the iShares Semiconductor ETF.

In regard to Tesla, Burry wrote:

“And finally I shorted Tesla at 416.22. Happy it jumped back to this level.”

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This means Burry likely opened his new short position after the company’s recent rally on Wall Street, which saw Tesla shares sink in mid-May, only to recover to well over the $400 mark. Currently, shares trade at around $427.

The company saw a big Tuesday as shares climbed considerably, over 10 percent. The size of the Tesla short was not provided, nor did Burry give any information on the position’s structure, the number of shares, dollar value, or whether options were used in the short.

The Tesla and SpaceX merger everyone is talking about is quietly building

Over the years, Burry has been one of the more vocal critics of Tesla, calling its share price “media inflated,” and saying it was “ridiculously overvalued” as recently as December.

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The company has largely transitioned away from being known as an automotive company and instead is much more widely regarded as an AI play, mostly due to its Full Self-Driving efforts, Optimus robot development, and data collection related to both.

This has not pulled those skeptics away from being vocal about their distaste for how Tesla is valued, but there’s no denying that the company is a global force in many things, including sustainable energy, automotive, and AI.

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Investor's Corner

SpaceX gets initial stock coverage from Tesla’s biggest bull

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SpaceX Starship V3 flight 12
SpaceX Starship V3 flight 12 (Credit: SpaceX)

Wedbush Securities is initiating stock coverage on SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX), marking the first comments on the company since it went public several weeks ago. Wedbush and its analyst handling coverage, Dan Ives, are widely bullish on fellow Musk company Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA).

Ives wrote his first note initiating coverage of SpaceX shares on Wednesday with a $190 price target and an ‘Outperform’ rating. The firm believes the company is well positioned off of its IPO because of its wide array of projects, including AI compute power and infrastructure, connectivity projects, and launches.

“We view SpaceX as one of the most differentiated assets within the tech market with a strong footprint across its three core markets, with Starlink driving success with connectivity,” Ives wrote, “Starship launches leading to a demand flywheel and increasing deal flow for its Colossus clusters.”

Elon Musk called it Epic: The full story of SpaceX’s Starship Flight 12

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Wedbush leans heavily on Starlink, which they say is the “profitability driver given the strength of its recurring revenue base of ~12 million subscribers as of June 5th.” Ives believes Starlink is still in the “early innings” of penetrating the global telecommunications and broadband market, as it only holds less than a 1 percent share. However, this number is sure to increase over time.

It also highlights the importance of Starship, which it says is an “essential layer” of SpaceX’s overall success. SpaceX developing and displaying the ability to reuse rockets is a major cost and reliability advantage “as it reduces the necessary hardware launch costs while generating a feedback loop for future flights to improve their launch flight rate without accelerating capex spend.”

Finally, SpaceX’s recent AI/Compute projects are also very elementary, Ives writes. It is worth mentioning Wedbush said its $190 price target is derived from a valuation forecast that sees the company yielding roughly $2.48 trillion of implied enterprise value.

There are also some factors that Wedbush did not take into account with its initial coverage. The firm wrote in the note:

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“We note that there is optional value coming from Starship’s accelerating scale towards sub-$200/kg unit economics, orbital data centers, and enterprise AI monetization as these factors could drive meaningful upside but these face major hurdles, so we do not take that into account with our valuation.”

SpaceX shares are down just over 2 percent today, trading at around $167 at the time of publication.

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