Investor's Corner
Tesla (TSLA) gets optimistic outlook from Wall St ahead of Q3 2018 earnings report
Tesla shares (NASDAQ:TSLA) are holding their gains as the company heads towards its third-quarter earnings call. Following a 12.72% rise on Tuesday amidst the company’s earlier-than-expected earnings announcement and a vocal short-seller’s change of heart, Tesla stock was up 2.51% on Wednesday’s opening bell, breaching the $300 barrier and trading at $301.52 per share.
With the electric car maker invoking a sense of confidence with its upcoming earnings call, several Wall Street analysts have adopted an optimistic outlook on the company. JMP Securities analyst Joseph Osha, for one, gave Tesla an “Outperform” rating and a $350 price target, citing the accumulated “expertise” that the company has exhibited in electric vehicle development and manufacturing.
Baird analyst Ben Kallo has also given Tesla an “Outperform” rating, stating that the company’s positive cash flow could prove sufficient to drive TSLA shares higher. With regards to the upcoming earnings call, Kallo noted that management might provide additional details on how the company intends to increase its production capabilities over the next few quarters.
New Street Research’s Pierre Ferragu has given TSLA stock a “Buy” rating, stating that he expects major free cash flow beat in the third quarter, and continued positive free cash flow in Q4 and beyond. Ferragu noted that Tesla might still raise equity down the line to strengthen its balance sheet, but the company would likely do it only in good market conditions and at the right price.
James Albertine of Consumer Edge further noted that Tesla’s fundamentals had seen a notable improvement in the third quarter, thanks to the ramp of higher-margin Model 3 that sold for around $50,000 to $55,000. The Wall Street analyst has an “Equalweight” rating on Tesla ahead of the company’s Q3 2018 earnings call.
Even Brian Johnson of Barclays, who has an “Underweight” rating on TSLA stock, notes that a sharp increase in Tesla’s deliveries and production have set up a “bear trap.” Johnson further stated that Tesla could have boosted its cash balance by about $800 million in the quarter, bringing the company’s balance to around $3.5 billion.
Tesla shares have exhibited an immense amount of volatility in the past couple of months, partly due to the actions of Elon Musk. During August, for example, Musk posted a tweet stating that he was considering taking Tesla private at $420 per share, and that he had “funding secured.” The fallout of Musk’s “funding secured” tweet included an eventual lawsuit from the Securities and Exchange Commission, who alleged that the CEO misled investors with his Twitter announcement. Musk and the SEC would later reach a settlement, but the damage to Tesla stock would be notable.
Despite the noise surrounding the company and its CEO, though, the fundamentals of Tesla have been exhibiting signs of improvement. When the company released its vehicle production and deliveries report, for one, Tesla revealed that in the third quarter, it had manufactured a total of 80,142 electric cars including 53,239 Model 3, and delivered a total of 83,500 vehicles, comprised of 55,840 Model 3, 14,470 Model S, and 13,190 Model X. VIN registrations for the Model 3 seem to be picking up this October, and a new variant of the electric sedan, the Mid Range Model 3 RWD, was unveiled earlier this month as well.
Overall, this upcoming Q3 2018 earnings call could be historic for the electric car maker. With Tesla out of “production hell,” the company might be on the cusp of entering an era where it is making money. In Elon Musk’s words earlier this year, it’s high time that Tesla starts showing some profit for all its hard work.
Tesla’s Q3 Update letter would be posted on Tesla’s Investor Relations website after markets close today. Tesla would start its Q3 earnings call at 3:30 pm Pacific Time (6:30 pm Eastern Time).
As of writing, Tesla shares are trading -1.02% at $291.14 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.”
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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:
“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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