Investor's Corner
Tesla remains under pressure as Bernstein questions TSLA assets
Tesla stock (NASDAQ:TSLA) neared the $180 per share support level on Monday, amidst the release of a bearish note from Bernstein analyst Max Warburton, who questioned the value of Tesla’s “assets.” In his note, the analyst claimed that the value (or lack thereof) of the electric car maker’s tech, factories, charging network, and brand would likely make the company unattractive to potential buyers, such as Volkswagen AG.
“What assets are attractive? Tesla no longer has genuinely differentiated tech. The production plant is sub-par. The Gigafactory is probably not essential (and may be claimed by Panasonic). The brand still has value, albeit one that is declining fast. The Supercharger Network also has some value. Perhaps these get picked up. But at what price? We struggle to see it being sold as a going concern,” Warburton stated.
It should be noted that Warburton is not Bernstein’s leading TSLA analyst. Instead, he covers several European automakers for the financial firm, some of whom would likely take a look at the electric car maker if it hits a point where an acquisition becomes a plausible scenario. Despite his reservations on the Silicon Valley-based company, the analyst did credit Tesla for its technology, which have put German automakers in a defensive position.
“Its technology seemed ahead of all other OEMs – damaging the Germans’ relative brand position. Tesla took market share from the German OEMs in the US, UK, and some other regions. But (the) financial failure of Tesla would force a change in investors’ views of traditional OEMs. It would show how difficult it is for a new entrant to succeed. Most important: it would change views on the size and growth rates of the EV market,” the Bernstein analyst noted.
Warburton’s observations and reservations about Tesla’s assets seem premature at best and ill-conceived at worst. If Tesla’s tech really does not hold an edge against veteran automakers anymore, for example, then vehicles such as the Audi e-tron have no excuse for their subpar efficiency and range compared to the older, larger Model X. Over-the-air firmware updates should also be the norm across experienced automakers if the analyst’s statements about Tesla’s non-differentiated tech are accurate. It should also be noted that Warburton seems to be grossly undervaluing the Fremont factory, Gigafactory, and the Supercharger Network, all of which are pretty much unmatched in the EV market today.
Besides, considering leaked emails from Tesla CEO Elon Musk about the company’s potential numbers for the second quarter, it is likely far too early to start speculating about why the electric car maker cannot be sold. After all, Tesla is not for sale, at least at this point.
Interestingly, these sweeping doubts about Tesla’s value were mentioned by New Street Research analyst Pierre Ferragu, who currently holds an optimistic $530 price target on TSLA stock. Ferragu recently stated that Tesla’s current rough phases would likely come to pass, especially since the company captured about 15% of the premium car market in the US in March and April. The New Street Research analyst also noted that there is a “disconnect” when it comes to TSLA shares today. “The disconnect between sentiment and reality on Tesla is at its all-time high,” Ferragu said.
As of writing, Tesla stock is trading -1.73% at $181.95 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 crushes Wall Street expectations, beats delivery estimates by over 15 percent
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.
🚨 BREAKING: Tesla delivered 480,126 vehicles in Q2, ANNIHILATING Wall Street expectations of 406,000. Production was reported at 451,758.
Deliveries:
Model 3/Y: 467,762
Other Models: 12,364Production:
Model 3/Y: 442,936
Other Models: 8,822 https://t.co/TTHwQAsKt8 pic.twitter.com/7qI4Zj6FE5— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 2, 2026
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.
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.
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.
Investor's Corner
Tesla gets its latest short from Michael Burry: ‘Happy it jumped back to this level’
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.”
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.
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.
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
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:
“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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