Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) can rebound with 10 turnaround ideas, according to a new note from Wedbush analyst Dan Ives.
Tesla reported Earnings for Q4 and Full Year 2023 on Wednesday, and after what was widely considered to be a weak conference call, the stock dropped over 12 percent on Thursday.
Dan Ives, an analyst at Wedbush who has been routinely bullish on the stock, was one of the most vocal personalities on Wall Street yesterday as varying ideas surrounding the narrative of the Earnings Call circulated.
Ives called the call a “train wreck,” and talked about the lack of information Tesla reported during Earnings. There was no indication of what investors should expect in terms of margins or outlook in production.
Instead, Tesla stated it expected a “notable” drop in growth rate in 2024 as it gears up for its next-generation platform, which it plans to launch in the second half of 2025.
“This was 101 how to not to do a conference call,” Ives commented on Thursday morning. Wedbush removed Tesla stock from its “Best Ideas List” as well.
Tesla Can Rebound with These 10 Things: Wedbush
However, Ives is back with a note on Friday, which he shared with investors. According to the analyst, there are ten ways Tesla can turn around its stock:
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- Announce a $10 Billion Share Buyback With Roughly $30 Billion of Cash on hand. Walk the walk, not just talk the talk and show confidence to investors
- Create an “X Holding” Structure That Will Include AI Initiatives (Dojo, Optimus, FSD) to give Musk More Control and could get him to ~25% voting level
- Stop the price cuts now and maintain margin leverage over other auto players
- Hold an AI Day before the summer timeframe so investors can better understand the goals for Dojo, Optimus, FSD
- Get outside capital for X/Twitter with assurances of no more Musk stock sales
- New comp package with the proxy to lock in Musk as CEO Through 2030, along with settling Delaware legal issue holding things up
- Hittable production/delivery timeline for Model 2 and sub $30k vehicle in 2025
- With Zach (former CFO) gone, conference calls have been horror shows; return to formal guidance and goalposts and make messaging changes on calls
- Do an aggressive AI acquisition spree and bring in outside capital to build out the AI component of Tesla…~$30 Billion of cash to fund deals
- Give long-term targets around AI revenue to the Tesla ecosystem. We believe Tesla could be the biggest AI company in the world around FSD, autonomous, Dojo, Optimus, robotaxis…give this key AI framework to the Street/investors
Several of the ideas Ives lists would clarify some skepticism investors may hold after the Earnings Call.
One of the more notable things to recognize on the list is the price cut narrative, which investors continue to focus on. While they are great for consumers, they put pressure on Tesla’s profits, which is why it has continued to be so strong for years.
Additionally, offering CEO Elon Musk a new comp package could alleviate pressure on the stock from his comments last week, where he said he would be “uncomfortable” moving Tesla into more development of AI without greater control.
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Ives reduced his price target on Tesla from $350 to $315 but still holds an ‘Outperform’ rating on the stock.
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Elon Musk
Tesla AI boss reveals how big Optimus is going to get
Tesla’s Optimus chief corrected himself on X, confirming a staggering 10 million robot production target.
![Tesla Optimus Gen 3 [Credit: Tesla]](https://www.teslarati.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/tesla-optimus-gen3-diner.jpg)
Tesla’s Optimus program has a new number attached to it, after Ashok Elluswamy, the executive who has run the humanoid robot program since June 2025, posted a three word correction on X Thursday, “Correction, 10 million robots.”
The line clarifies the long term annual capacity Tesla is building toward its planned second Optimus production line at Gigafactory Texas, a figure Musk has cited repeatedly since last year’s shareholder meeting.
The scale is worth noting, because ten million robots a year would mean Tesla building more units annually than most countries sell in new cars. Tesla has framed this as a second line, not the first. The buildout is happening in two phases: a roughly one million unit per year line inside Tesla’s Fremont factory, installed on the floor space vacated when Model S and Model X production ended earlier this year, and a much larger dedicated facility under construction at Giga Texas that broke ground on its first steel structure in May. That Texas facility is the one Elluswamy’s correction refers to, and is expected to reach volume production sometime in 2027.
Correction, 10 million robots https://t.co/0z4nyQNTzp
— Ashok Elluswamy (@aelluswamy) July 30, 2026
Tesla Optimus project fires up as Musk sees production line progress
Elluswamy took over Optimus from Milan Kovac last summer and has spent the months since talking up the program’s trajectory. Elon Musk has also floated the ten million figure at Tesla’s 2025 shareholder meeting.
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Ending Model S and Model X production to make room for the first Optimus line was one of the more consequential manufacturing decisions in the company’s recent history, retiring two flagship vehicles in favor of a robot that has yet to enter mass production. Musk has previously estimated per unit production costs at $20,000 to $25,000 once Tesla reaches a million units a year, though he hasn’t said what that cost looks like at ten times the volume.
SpaceX just picked up another $1.6 billion from the Pentagon, with the U.S. Space Force awarding two task orders worth $1.6 billion to fly 18 Falcon 9 missions from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California through the end of 2027. The launches will carry satellites for the Space Based Sensing and Targeting portfolio, a set of programs meant to help the military detect and track airborne threats and relay that information across forces in near real time.
The award falls under National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 1, the Space Force’s faster, commercial style procurement track for missions that do not require the military’s most demanding certification process. It is also the largest single order publicly disclosed under that program so far, and the first task order issued since the Space Force nearly tripled Lane 1’s contract ceiling from $5.6 billion to $17 billion on July 17.
SpaceX to become America’s Military data backbone for missiles, drones, and warfighters
Eric Zarybnisky, the Space Force’s acting portfolio acquisition executive for space access, said the entire process, from identifying the requirement to signing the contract, took about two months, including a month set aside for companies to prepare proposals.
SpaceX is not just launching these satellites. It already holds the contracts to build two of the programs within the same portfolio, $4.16 billion for the Space Based Airborne Moving Target Indicator system and $2.29 billion for the Space Data Network Backbone, which Teslarati covered in May. That means SpaceX is now responsible for both building key pieces of the military’s next generation sensing network and getting them into orbit.
With this latest award, SpaceX’s Pentagon contract total for 2026 alone tops $8 billion, adding to a defense portfolio that already includes the Golden Dome missile defense software group SpaceX joined in April and a string of GPS launches it inherited after ULA’s Vulcan rocket ran into a booster anomaly, which we detailed in March.
Lane 1’s vendor pool technically includes seven companies: SpaceX, ULA, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, Stoke Space, Impulse Space, and Relativity Space. In practice, SpaceX remains the only provider with the combination of launch cadence, flight proven Falcon 9 hardware, and West Coast infrastructure to support a campaign requiring roughly one Vandenberg launch a month for the next year and a half.
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Some lawmakers have flagged the growing concentration of national security launches with one company as a risk worth watching. For now, the Space Force keeps backing SpaceX, with it being the company that shows up ready to launch.
SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) got an absolutely crazy price target rating from Raymond James after the company experienced a tough first few weeks following its Initial Public Offering (IPO).
Despite the tumultuous start, SpaceX has plenty of believers, and the company’s massively successful Starship launch last Friday, its 13th test flight of the massive rocket, went so smoothly that Raymond James analysts pushed its price target on the company to roughly 7 times its current trading level.
SpaceX Starship just nailed something it’s never done before
The firm officially put a “Strong Buy” rating and an $800 price target on the stock. It currently trades at around $113. Its all-time high is $225.64, reaching this trading level shortly after shares first went public.
Raymond James’ price target is tied to the firm’s confidence after Starship’s 13th test flight. Analysts at the firm said it was an incremental step that reduces engineering risks, citing the widely successful heat shield test that CEO Elon Musk recently detailed, the smooth deployment of Starlink V3 satellites, and a successful in-space engine relight.
SpaceX also managed to see Starship splash down safely in the Indian Ocean, while the Super Heavy Booster fell down to the Gulf of America with no incidents.
It is interesting to see these launches have such a tremendous impact on the stock and what investors think of it. After SpaceX initially delayed the Starship launch last week, shares fell tremendously. Most probably did not realize that the stand-down is a standard practice, especially if everything is not perfect.
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The mission was initially aborted due to an issue with Raptor engines. This was resolved, and Starship launched last Friday after another delay on Thursday, which was caused by weather.
Now that analysts have seen what SpaceX launches are capable of and how impressive the feat is, firms are adjusting their price targets accordingly, making it known that they have high expectations for the space exploration company.
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![Tesla Optimus Gen 3 [Credit: Tesla]](https://www.teslarati.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/tesla-optimus-gen3-diner-80x80.jpg)
