Tesla TSLA reported second-quarter vehicle deliveries that comfortably exceeded Wall Street expectations on Thursday, signaling a significant rebound in demand as the electric-vehicle maker navigates an increasingly competitive global market.
The company delivered 480,126 vehicles worldwide during the second quarter, according to a statement released Thursday.
The result came in well above analyst expectations. FactSet estimates had pointed to deliveries of approximately 409,000 vehicles, while Tesla's company-compiled consensus forecast stood at roughly 406,000 units.
The stronger-than-expected performance marks a notable recovery for Tesla after a challenging period.
Vehicle sales came under pressure from slowing electric-vehicle demand, rising competition, and political controversies surrounding Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk.
Deliveries increased 25% from a year earlier, when Tesla faced consumer backlash linked to Musk's work with the Trump administration.
Despite the stronger-than-expected deliveries, Tesla shares fell nearly 3% in Thursday morning trading as investors took profits following a sharp rally in recent sessions.
The stock remains up roughly 11% over the past five trading days, suggesting much of the delivery upside had already been anticipated.
Morningstar noted that the company's vehicle mix continued to shift toward its mass-market offerings, with Tesla delivering 467,762 Model 3 and Model Y vehicles during the quarter.
The firm also pointed to Tesla's energy storage business, where deployments reached 13.5 gigawatt-hours, up from both a year ago and the previous quarter but slightly below analyst expectations of 13.8 GWh.
Investors are now awaiting Tesla's full second-quarter results on July 22 for additional details on profitability and business performance.
China made EV sales also remain strongFresh data also showed continued momentum at its Shanghai manufacturing hub, which supplies both the Chinese market and export destinations across Europe.
Data released Thursday by the China Passenger Car Association showed that deliveries of Model 3 and Model Y vehicles produced at Tesla's Shanghai factory rose 24.4% year over year in June to 89,091 units.
The increase followed a 39.4% gain recorded in May.
For the second quarter as a whole, Tesla's combined China sales and exports from the Shanghai facility increased 32.8% compared with the same period last year.
The results suggest Tesla's recovery in Europe also continued during the quarter, helping offset broader concerns about slowing growth in the global electric-vehicle market.
Despite the strong delivery performance, investor attention has increasingly shifted beyond Tesla's traditional automotive business.
Many shareholders are focused on Musk's longer-term strategy centered on artificial intelligence, autonomous driving, and robotics.
Tesla is investing heavily in projects including its Cybercab autonomous vehicle platform and Optimus humanoid robots, initiatives that many investors view as potentially more important to the company's long-term valuation than vehicle sales alone.
Speculation has also grown around the possibility of a future combination between Tesla and SpaceX following the rocket company's blockbuster initial public offering last month.
Even as investors look toward those future opportunities, Tesla's vehicle business remains a critical source of cash generation.
Maintaining strong delivery growth is particularly important as the company significantly increases spending on new initiatives.
Tesla plans to invest more than $25 billion this year, roughly three times the amount spent last year, as it expands manufacturing capacity and accelerates development of autonomous vehicles, robotics, and related technologies.
Tesla also received favorable regulatory news on Thursday.
The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it had closed a preliminary evaluation launched in 2022 involving approximately 695,000 Tesla vehicles over reports of unexpected deceleration.
The investigation covered Model 3 and Model Y vehicles.
According to the agency, the decision was based on a low demonstrated hazard to drivers and a substantial decline in incident reports following software updates introduced by Tesla in early 2022.
NHTSA said reported incidents fell from roughly 300 cases when the investigation began to 45 reports in 2024, 19 in 2025, and just three so far in 2026.
The regulator added that the reported conditions did not alter vehicle lane positioning or create significant reductions in following distance that could lead to collisions.
The development follows another recent regulatory decision.
Last week, NHTSA separately closed an expanded investigation involving an estimated 376,241 Model 3 and Model Y vehicles over concerns related to loss of steering control.
Together, the strong delivery numbers and regulatory developments provided Tesla with a series of positive headlines as the company continues balancing a recovering automotive business with ambitious investments in artificial intelligence, autonomy, and robotics.
Tesla Model 3 vehicles are shown for sale at a Tesla facility in Long Beach, California, U.S., May 22, 2023. REUTERS/Mike Blake Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab
CompaniesJuly 2 (Reuters) - The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) on Thursday said it had closed its 2022 preliminary evaluation into 695,000 Tesla (TSLA.O), opens new tab vehicles over unexpected deceleration, citing low demonstrated hazard to drivers and a substantial drop in incidents.
Here are a few details:
Jumpstart your morning with the latest legal news delivered straight to your inbox from The Daily Docket newsletter. Sign up here.
The investigation covered Model 3 and Model Y vehicles.
NHTSA said that Tesla had released software updates in early 2022 to target unexpected deceleration.
Incident reports declined to 45 in 2024, 19 in 2025, and three since the start of 2026, according to the auto safety regulator. There were 300 such reports when the investigation was opened.
The regulator said the reported conditions did not alter the vehicle’s lateral positioning in their lanes and did not cause significant loss in distance between the subject and following vehicle to lead to a collision.
Last week, NHTSA had separately closed an expanded probe covering an estimated 376,241 Model 3 and Model Y vehicles over loss of steering control.
Reporting by Disha Mishra in Bengaluru; Editing by Nivedita Bhattacharjee
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab
A Tesla Semi was involved in a fatal crash that killed two people on June 28, 2026, in Dayton, Nevada.
Tesla
Tesla’s new electric Semi was involved in a crash earlier this week that killed two people, the first known fatal accident involving the carmaker’s newest model, which just went into regular production this year.
According to reports from the Nevada Highway Patrol and Lyon County Sheriff’s Department, the 10-ton Tesla truck slammed into a small, vintage Volkswagen Beetle at an intersection on U.S. 50 in Dayton, Nevada, around 7:20 a.m. local time. Both occupants of the Beetle, who aren’t identified in the initial reports, died from injuries resulting from the crash, Trooper James LaRose told Forbes. The driver of the Tesla truck wasn’t injured.
The cause of the accident, which took place about 30 miles southwest of Tesla’s Nevada Gigafactory, which builds the Semi, hasn’t yet been determined, LaRose said. However, a Facebook post by the Sheriff’s Department said, “preliminary statements obtained at the scene suggest the driver of the semi may have fallen asleep.”
Tesla is counting on the Semi to expand its vehicle sales beyond the consumer market and to take on diesel trucking giants such as Kenworth, Volvo and Daimler with an electric model capable of hauling 60,000-pound loads up to 500 miles per charge. The company hasn’t yet disclosed Semi sales so far this year, but may include them in a quarterly release expected on July 2.
The company says the truck is equipped with the latest safety features, including 10 cameras to monitor its surroundings and, according to media reports, a driver-monitoring system. Typically, such systems are designed to detect when the person at the wheel is distracted or sleeping. “Semi comes standard with active safety features that pair with advanced motor and brake controls to deliver traction and stability in all conditions,” according to Tesla’s website.
Tesla didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the crash.
The Highway Patrol’s LaRose wasn’t able to confirm whether the Tesla was hauling a load at the time of the accident. Fully loaded, the electric cab and trailer can weigh up to 82,000 pounds – 40 times the VW’s weight.
The crash shut down a portion of U.S. 50 for about two hours, according to police. Investigators expect to provide further details early next week, LaRose said. The crash was reported earlier by The Record-Courier of Minden, Nevada, and local news site CarsonNow.
More From ForbesForbesTesla Semi’s Biggest Rival Might Be Its Chinese TwinBy Alan Ohnsman
ForbesTesla’s Semi Is Finally Hitting The Road. The Timing Couldn’t Be WorseBy Alan Ohnsman
Have you been searching for a stock that might be well-positioned to maintain its earnings-beat streak in its upcoming report? It is worth considering Tesla (TSLA - Free Report) , which belongs to the Zacks Automotive - Domestic industry.
When looking at the last two reports, this electric car maker has recorded a strong streak of surpassing earnings estimates. The company has topped estimates by 12.50%, on average, in the last two quarters.
For the last reported quarter, Tesla came out with earnings of $0.41 per share versus the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $0.36 per share, representing a surprise of 13.89%. For the previous quarter, the company was expected to post earnings of $0.45 per share and it actually produced earnings of $0.5 per share, delivering a surprise of 11.11%.
Price and EPS Surprise
For Tesla, estimates have been trending higher, thanks in part to this earnings surprise history. And when you look at the stock's positive Zacks Earnings ESP (Expected Surprise Prediction), it's a great indicator of a future earnings beat, especially when combined with its solid Zacks Rank.
Our research shows that stocks with the combination of a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) or better produce a positive surprise nearly 70% of the time. In other words, if you have 10 stocks with this combination, the number of stocks that beat the consensus estimate could be as high as seven.
The Zacks Earnings ESP compares the Most Accurate Estimate to the Zacks Consensus Estimate for the quarter; the Most Accurate Estimate is a version of the Zacks Consensus whose definition is related to change. The idea here is that analysts revising their estimates right before an earnings release have the latest information, which could potentially be more accurate than what they and others contributing to the consensus had predicted earlier.
Tesla has an Earnings ESP of +2.99% at the moment, suggesting that analysts have grown bullish on its near-term earnings potential. When you combine this positive Earnings ESP with the stock's Zacks Rank #3 (Hold), it shows that another beat is possibly around the corner.
When the Earnings ESP comes up negative, investors should note that this will reduce the predictive power of the metric. But, a negative value is not indicative of a stock's earnings miss.
Many companies end up beating the consensus EPS estimate, but that may not be the sole basis for their stocks moving higher. On the other hand, some stocks may hold their ground even if they end up missing the consensus estimate.
Because of this, it's really important to check a company's Earnings ESP ahead of its quarterly release to increase the odds of success. Make sure to utilize our Earnings ESP Filter to uncover the best stocks to buy or sell before they've reported.
Tesla stock TSLA rose on Wednesday as investors positioned ahead of the electric-vehicle maker's closely watched second-quarter delivery report.
Improving European sales data supported sentiment on Wednesday despite broader weakness across technology stocks.
Shares of Tesla gained in early trading even as much of the technology sector moved lower. The stock was up around 2%.
The broader market was mixed. The Nasdaq Composite fell 0.4%, while the S&P 500 slipped 0.1%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 88 points.
Technology stocks were under pressure, with Micron falling 6%, Sandisk dropping 8%, Nvidia losing roughly 2%, and Broadcom declining about 1%. SpaceX shares also fell more than 6%.
Tesla is scheduled to report second-quarter vehicle deliveries on Thursday, a release that could prove pivotal for investor sentiment after several years of slowing growth.
Wall Street estimates vary considerably.
Analysts surveyed by FactSet expect Tesla to deliver approximately 409,000 vehicles during the quarter.
Bloomberg's consensus estimate is closer to 400,000 vehicles, while Tesla's own company-compiled consensus stands at roughly 406,000 units.
The wide range of forecasts highlights uncertainty around demand trends during a quarter shaped by geopolitical tensions, elevated fuel prices, and the continued impact of changes to US electric-vehicle incentives.
A stronger-than-expected result could mark Tesla's second consecutive quarter of year-over-year delivery growth.
The company has not achieved back-to-back quarters of annual delivery growth since 2024.
Growth remains a key challengeTesla's vehicle business has faced a difficult period following years of rapid expansion.
Annual deliveries peaked at approximately 1.8 million vehicles in 2023 before declining in both 2024 and 2025.
Wall Street currently expects Tesla to return to modest growth in 2026, with annual deliveries projected at roughly 1.7 million vehicles.
Several factors have contributed to the slowdown.
Tesla elected not to pursue an all-new lower-priced vehicle platform, instead prioritizing development of its Cybercab robotaxi program.
The company has also faced the impact of the expiration of the $7,500 federal electric-vehicle purchase tax credit, which increased costs for many US consumers.
At the same time, rising gasoline prices provided some support for electric-vehicle demand during the second quarter.
Adding to optimism ahead of the delivery report, new data released Wednesday showed Tesla registrations continued to improve across several European markets during June.
Registrations, which are widely viewed as a proxy for sales, rose 39% in Denmark, 56% in Sweden, and 5.6% in Spain, according to data from bilstatistik.dk, Mobility Sweden, and ANFAC.
In France, registrations more than doubled from a year earlier, according to automotive industry body PFA.
The figures suggest Tesla's European business may be recovering after a challenging period during which the company lost market share amid growing competition from Chinese manufacturers, a relatively limited product lineup, and consumer reactions to Chief Executive Elon Musk's political positions.
Norway was a notable exception. Tesla registrations there fell 43% from a year earlier, according to data from compiler OFV.
Market observers attributed part of the decline to demand being pulled forward ahead of changes to electric-vehicle incentives scheduled for 2026.
Investors have increasingly positioned for a stronger quarter.
Heading into Wednesday's session, Tesla shares had gained 10.8% during the week following consecutive advances on Monday and Tuesday.
The rally suggests investors expect the company to deliver results that support the narrative of stabilizing vehicle demand, even as much of Tesla's long-term valuation remains tied to future opportunities in autonomous driving, robotaxis, and artificial intelligence.
With delivery estimates spread across a wide range and expectations elevated following the recent share-price gains, Thursday's report is likely to be a significant catalyst for the stock.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA | TSLA Price Prediction) and Rivian (NASDAQ: RIVN) both posted Q1 2026 results that beat Wall Street estimates, yet the businesses underneath are on opposite ends of the EV maturity curve.
Tesla flexed margin expansion and AI ambition. Rivian leaned on partnerships and a fresh product launch to bridge to profitability. Comparing them now, with R2 shipping and Robotaxi rides live in Texas, finally feels useful.
Margins Carry Tesla. R2 Carries Rivian. Tesla pulled in $22.387 billion in revenue, up 15.78% YoY, with automotive gross margin expanding to 21.1% from 16.2%. Lower material costs, a higher average selling price, and a roughly $0.9 billion FX tailwind did the heavy lifting. Services and Other revenue jumped 42% as active FSD subscriptions hit 1.28 million, up 51%. Software is becoming a real, material line item.
Rivian delivered 10,365 vehicles, a 20% jump, and revenue of $1.381 billion. The catch: the automotive segment swung to a $62 million gross loss from a $92 million profit a year earlier, hurt by a $100 million drop in regulatory credits and a heavier commercial van mix.
Software and Services climbed 49% to $473 million, almost entirely thanks to the Volkswagen joint venture work. CEO RJ Scaringe framed the quarter around the R2 launch and the $4.5 billion DOE loan for the Georgia plant.
Self-Funded Empire vs. Partnership-Funded Bet Lens Tesla Rivian Cash on hand $44.74B $4.83B (with committed funding) Q1 Free Cash Flow +$1.44B -$1.08B Autonomy bet FSD + Robotaxi in Dallas/Houston Up to 50,000 R2 robotaxis for Uber Robotics bet Optimus (1M/yr Fremont line) Mind Robotics (deconsolidated) Tesla is building its own semiconductor fab with SpaceX and ramping LFP cells in Nevada.
Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and Tesla didn't make the cut. Grab the names FREE today.
Rivian is leaning on a $1 billion VW equity check, a $1.25 billion Uber commitment through 2031, and a DOE loan that does not start drawing until early 2027. Two very different risk profiles.
The Next Test Is R2 Volume and FSD Conversion Rivian guided to 62,000 to 67,000 deliveries and adjusted EBITDA between -$2.10 billion and -$1.80 billion. The R2 bill of materials is expected to land at roughly 50% of R1, which is the entire profitability thesis.
Tesla offered no formal guidance, but Cybercab pilot production, Megapack 3, and the EU rollout of FSD are the catalysts I am tracking. Prediction markets currently skew toward a strong Q2 delivery print.
Why I Lean Tesla for Compounding, Rivian for the Lottery Ticket Personally, I find Tesla’s setup more defensible. A 345 trailing P/E is uncomfortable, and the stock is down 8.42% year to date, but the combination of expanding auto margins, growing FSD subscriptions, and a self-funded AI roadmap is hard to replicate.
Rivian intrigues me as a turnaround. Shares trade near $16.81, and if R2 hits its cost targets, the upside is large. I would still want one clean quarter of automotive gross profit before sizing it as anything more than a speculative slice. If input costs spike or EV credits get cut, I would step back from both.
Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and Tesla didn't make the cut. Grab the names FREE today.
Tesla is once again the ticker every headline is chasing, riding a 10.22% one-week rip on robotaxi buzz and Optimus promises. But here’s what you should actually be watching.
The Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA | TSLA Price Prediction) story requires you to pay 416x earnings for a company whose full-year 2025 revenue fell 2.93%, whose annual net income dropped 46.79%, and whose deliveries declined 9% for the year. That is a story stock trading at a growth stock’s multiple, and the story keeps slipping to the right. Prediction markets currently assign a 0.5% probability to a California robotaxi launch by June 30, 2026, and a 0.1% probability to an Optimus release in the same window. The composite sentiment score has dropped 17.67 points in the past 7 days. Tesla trades at $420.60, down 6.48% year-to-date, while the promises get pushed into 2026 and beyond.
Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) is the cash machine hiding in plain sight while everyone stares at Cybercab renderings. Three reasons the smart money is quietly stacking Apple.
1. Valuation Sanity on a Proven Business Apple trades at roughly 38x earnings. Tesla trades at 416x. You are paying nearly ten times less per dollar of earnings for a business generating a 171.4% return on equity and a 32.0% operating margin, compared with Tesla’s 4.6% operating margin and 4.9% ROE. That premium leaves little margin for a robotaxi fleet that regulators have not approved.
2. A Capital Return Machine Tesla Cannot Match Apple’s board just authorized a fresh $100 billion buyback and lifted the dividend 4%. In fiscal 2025, Apple repurchased $90.71 billion of its own stock and returned roughly $32 billion to shareholders in Q1 26 alone. Tesla offers no dividend and no buyback. For an investor who wants cash flowing back to them rather than into humanoid robot production lines, this is not close.
SoFi Active Invest is offering a limited-time promotion. Open an account, fund it with $50 or more, and you could receive up to $1,000 in complimentary stock for Active Invest accounts. See for yourself by clicking here now.
3. Real Growth Happening Now Apple just posted its 8th consecutive EPS beat: $2.01 versus $1.94 consensus on $111.18 billion in revenue, up 16.6% year over year. iPhone revenue hit $56.99 billion on what Tim Cook called “extraordinary demand for the iPhone 17 lineup“. Services set another all-time record at $30.98 billion. Every geographic segment posted double-digit growth. Greater China alone surged to $25.53 billion in Q1 26 from $18.51 billion the prior year. Meanwhile Tesla’s automotive revenue fell 11% in Q4 25.
Bank of America reiterated its Buy with a $380 price target, calling Apple’s AI reset “underappreciated.” Apple shares are up 41.6% over the past year and 1,225.63% over the past decade. This is a compounder with 2.5 billion active devices and a Services annuity that keeps hitting records.
For investors weighing story-driven promises against demonstrated cash generation, the contrast between the two names is worth tracking.
Want Up To $1,000? SoFi Is Giving New Active Invest Users Free StockLooking to grow your money but unsure where to begin? SoFi Active Invest is offering a limited-time promotion—open an account, fund it with $50 or more, and you could receive up to $1,000 in complimentary stock for Active Invest accounts.
From $0 commission trading to fractional shares and automated investing, this app is designed to simplify investing for everyone, whether you’re just starting or already experienced. Its easy to sign up and secure your bonus.
Shares of Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA | TSLA Price Prediction) have been picking up in recent sessions, now close to 13% in just three sessions. Undoubtedly, just because Space Exploration Technologies (NASDAQ:SPCX) is the new hot Elon Musk stock in town does not mean shares of the EV juggernaut are going to be stuck going sideways for a while longer.
With the ambitious Terafab, a foundry, and some very impressive next-generation AI chips on the horizon, questions linger as to whether Tesla shares can outrun SpaceX. Certainly, SpaceX had its IPO at a fairly hefty price, and the price of admission has only grown since.
In any case, Tesla’s transition from EV maker to robotics innovator and AI chip play is already well underway. And arguably, the company has already delivered some pretty impressive innovations early on in its shifting of the gears.
The AI5 chip is jaw-droppingly impressive With the AI5 chip coming later in the year and the AI6 chip to follow, perhaps Tesla is the ultimate physical AI play and a more exciting bet than SpaceX, as Elon Musk looks to reduce its dependence on others as structural forces continue to make it tougher to get a spot on the production line. Given that AI demand could keep going from here, perhaps going down the route of a fab is the most logical thing to do, despite the price of the undertaking, the time it’ll take, and the very limited room for error.
In terms of breakthrough, the AI5 chip built on the 3nm process looks seriously impressive as the AI world moves into an inference inflection point. With reports of a 40x performance boost, it certainly feels like Tesla is the Magnificent Seven member with some of the most mouth-watering benchmarks.
Of course, it’s still early, but if the architecture behind the AI5 chip delivers, it’s not all too far-fetched to envision Tesla’s custom silicon stepping up to the plate as a serious challenger to Nvidia‘s (NASDAQ:NVDA) dominance. Of course, Nvidia’s not ignoring the opportunity at the edge either. Its RTX Spark superchip is every bit as impressive.
Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and Tesla didn't make the cut. Grab the names FREE today.
However, at the end of the day, Tesla’s chips are all about efficiency rather than raw power.
When it comes to the edge, perhaps surgical precision beats brute force. And with an army of Optimus humanoid robots on the way, as well as Tesla’s robotaxi opportunity, Tesla’s custom silicon is already going to find a home in some seriously impressive embodied AI products. Any way you look at it, it looks like Tesla is about to become a disruptor again as it beckons in the age of robotics.
The road ahead looks bright for Tesla as several catalysts align With a massive data moat and a recent “40x performance boost” milestone in the books, it feels like Tesla might be the underestimated AI chip play that might just pull to the very front of the pack in this AI race. And with the 2nm AI6 chip to follow, count me as unsurprised if Tesla finds a way to silence the doubters as it finds huge success driving right into the age of robotics.
Full Self-Driving (FSD) v14 Lite has been released for Hardware 3 vehicles, And it finally feels like Tesla is finally delivering on its wild promises. The big question for investors moving forward is whether Optimus, Terafab, and the custom silicon roadmap will also be a success, even when the odds of failure are so high. It’s tough to say, but if you’re a Musk believer, I do think Tesla now looks a whole lot more interesting after its latest sudden surge.
Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and Tesla didn't make the cut. Grab the names FREE today.
While shareholders might have welcomed Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) stock’s weekly 11% climb to $420.60, the climb is merely a temporary move ahead of a continued decline in the long run, at least judging by ‘Big Short’ Michael Burry’s latest market bet.
Specifically, the legendary short trader wrote on June 30 that TSLA equity’s rally finally enabled him to make a bearish trade against Elon Musk’s older public company while it was at $416.22:
And finally I shorted Tesla (TSLA) at 416.22. Happy it jumped back to this level.
Notably, Burry did not disclose the scale of his bet nor any other details in his premium Substack post titled ‘Trading Post June 30th, 2026.’
It did, however, reveal that the famous short-seller might be uncertain regarding the depth of Tesla’s incoming correction as he was, apparently, unwilling to take a position near the June 26 closing price of $379.71, or even June 29’s $411.84.
Tesla stock price one-week chart. Source: Google 2026 Tesla stock price performance Meanwhile, investor confidence in TSLA shares appears to be, at best, shaken in recent months. Indeed, after the electric vehicle (EV) maker’s equity soared toward $500 in late 2025, exceeding both the 2024 and 2021 highs, subsequent trading has been mostly bearish.
Even with the latest 11% upward move, Tesla stock remains 3.99% in the red year-to-date (YTD), and the July 30 pre-market might already be proving Burry’s assessment correct, considering that, by press time, the company is 0.67% down to $417.79.
So far, the deteriorating sentiment is most likely the result of dwindling EV sales and the perpetually shifting timetable for the ‘Robotaxi’ and FSD – autonomous driving system – rollout, but is also likely linked to the capital-hungry and recent SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) initial public offering (IPO).
Michael Burry shorted these stocks at the end of Q2, 2026 Elsewhere, Michael Burry revealed that Tesla is far from the only company he considers overvalued at the end of the second quarter (Q2) of 2026.
In the June 30 update on Substack, he disclosed taking a short position against Caterpillar (NYSE: CAT) at $1,060.98, Applied Materials (NASDAQ: AMAT) at $729.40, and the popular iShares Semiconductor ETF (SOXX) at $642.80.
Lastly, Burry appears to have doubled down on his bet against Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) as he disclosed a bearish position at $198.09 in the June 30 trade update.
Featured image via Shutterstock
Best Crypto Exchange for Intermediate Traders and Investors
Invest in cryptocurrencies and 3,000+ other assets including stocks and precious metals.
0% commission on stocks - buy in bulk or just a fraction from as little as $10. Other fees apply. For more information, visit etoro.com/trading/fees.
Copy top-performing traders in real time, automatically.
eToro USA is registered with FINRA for securities trading.
30+ million Users worldwide
eToro is a multi-asset investment platform. The value of your investments may go up or down. Your capital is at risk. Don’t invest unless you’re prepared to lose all the money you invest. This is a high-risk investment and you should not expect to be protected if something goes wrong. Take 2 mins to learn more.
Join Finbold's newsroom, become a Sales Executive today! Apply now to join Finbold as a crypto/finance news writer!
Coming into Wednesday trading, Tesla stock was down about 6% this year and up about 32% over the past 12 months. (Loic Venance / AFP via Getty Images)
Tesla is set to report deliveries over a period that included a war, soaring oil prices, and the ongoing effects of U.S. electric-vehicle policy changes.
HomeIndustriesAutomobilesEurope should be a source of strength when Tesla posts its second-quarter delivery numbers later this weekJuly 1, 2026, 7:30 a.m. ET
Tesla is set to report second-quarter sales on Thursday, with Wall Street forecasting limited growth as the U.S. electric-vehicle market struggles to show a meaningful bounce.
The company is expected to have sold between 401,000 and 406,024 vehicles in the just-completed second quarter, implying growth of up to 5.7% from a year earlier, according to analysts. That would also reflect an improvement from earlier in the year, when Tesla TSLA reported disappointing March quarter sales.
Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX +4.15%) and Tesla (TSLA +2.23%) are often compared because Elon Musk is the founder, CEO, and largest individual shareholder of both companies. And now that SpaceX is public, some investors are trying to decide which stock is the better buy. They may also be wondering whether one hypothetical that has been getting widely discussed -- a SpaceX-Tesla merger -- makes sense.
Considering that in the short time that is has been public, SpaceX briefly soared as high as 50% above the $150 per share price at which it opened its first day of trading, some investors may even be wondering whether a SpaceX stock split is in the cards for the relatively near future or if it is more likely to wait a decade to conduct its first split like Tesla did. Here's what could lead to a SpaceX stock split, and if the growth stock is a buy now.
Image source: Getty Images.
A primer on stock splits Stock splits do nothing to directly increase the value of a business. They simply divide the ownership pie into more parts. A split makes it easier for small retail investors to buy full shares of a company, although many brokers and employee stock plans offer fractional shares. Stock splits also make options contracts more accessible, since those are sold in 100-share increments.
That said, there can be a psychological effect. Seeing a stock go from $20 to $21 a share can feel underwhelming compared with a jump from $2,000 to $2,100 per share, even though both are 5% gains. What's more, a stock split is generally viewed as a tangible vote of confidence from management: Such events generally happen only after the share price has risen significantly, and they indicate that company leadership expects those gains to continue.
But research by The Motley Fool shows that the results for stocks in the periods after they split are mixed, so it's better to pick stocks to buy based on fundamentals instead of looking for splits.
Today's Change
(
4.15
%) $
6.82
Current Price
$
171.01
The makings of a SpaceX stock split Tesla went public in June 2010 at a non-split-adjusted price of $17 per share.In August 2020, Tesla announced its first-ever stock split -- a 5-for-1 stock split, to be exact, that gave four additional shares for each then-held share. It conducted a 3-for-1 split in 2022. That means Tesla's split-adjusted IPO price is just $1.13 per share -- a mind-blowing 33,503% gain for investors who bought at the IPO price and held.
At the time of its first split, Tesla was approaching $2,500 per share, and it was under $900 at the time of its second. But Tesla was a small-cap company at the time of its IPO, whereas SpaceX was the biggest IPO in history and is currently one of seven companies with market caps over $2 trillion.
What's more, SpaceX's IPO price was $135 per share.
In sum, it took Tesla a decade to engage in a stock split after it had gone from a small-cap to a large-cap company. SpaceX might only have to go up a few times over before considering a stock split.
It's worth noting that there's no standard price level for stock splits, but the vast majority of S&P 500 companies trade at under $1,000 per share. However, splits at lower share prices aren't unheard of. Apple was around $500 a share when it engaged in a 4-for-1 stock split in 2020. CrowdStrike is performing a 4-for-1 stock split on July 2, and it closed on June 26 at $701.09 per share.
SpaceX was trading at $153.23 per share at the time of this writing; if it increases in value by at least fourfold (which would put its market cap just over $10 trillion), I would not be surprised if it considers a stock split.
On a percentage basis, that would be a far smaller increase than Tesla had before its first split, but it certainly would be an unprecedented amount of market cap creation.
SpaceX needs its biggest bet to pay off SpaceX's potential road to $10 trillion will depend heavily on how successful it is at building and launching millions of AI data center satellites into orbit. The plan is to launch the first test satellites as early as 2027. From there, Elon Musk wants to increase the computing power of SpaceX's AI satellite constellation by an order of magnitude per year, which is 10 times -- meaning going from 1 gigawatt (GW) in 2027 to 10 GW in 2028, to 100 GW in 2029, to 1,000 GW (1 terawatt) by the end of 2030 -- assuming that the Terafab plant SpaceX is constructing in partnership with Tesla and Intel can produce the chips that its plan requires in sufficient quantity.
There are plenty of obstacles standing in SpaceX's way. For starters, these satellites will be much larger, both in mass and surface area, than Starlink's broadband and mobile satellites, so they will be much heavier and cost more to launch. What's more, placing them in the sun-synchronous orbit Musk has proposed would cause light pollution and create all kinds of headaches for astronomers. SpaceX is building a massive factory in Texas called Gigasat to make these satellites, which could encounter production challenges. Those are only some of a long list of technical and logistical hurdles that will need to be cleared.
And finally, if those issues are overcome, SpaceX will need to prove there is a customer base willing to pay top dollar for this orbital computing capacity to justify the costs. Or, put another way, SpaceX will need to demonstrate that there are measurable cost savings to be had from using orbital data centers rather than Earth-based data centers. If they pan out, those benefits would most likely be related to the fact that they will be powered by solar energy and use large radiator panels to expel the heat the servers generate as infrared radiation, rather than relying on water-based heat sinks or liquid cooling systems.
If SpaceX somehow pulls all of this off, it will become the most important AI infrastructure company in the world and help address one of the biggest challenges in AI -- the energy bottleneck. It could provide the jumping-off point -- and more importantly, the cash flow -- for SpaceX to pursue other endeavors in space technology and interplanetary travel.
Under that outcome, with the combined value of SpaceX-owned xAI and X (formerly Twitter), SpaceX would absolutely deserve a market cap north of $10 trillion, be the world's most valuable company, and could reach the point where its stock price warranted a split. If it launches 1 million AI computing satellites in less than five years, it could engage in a stock split a lot sooner in its publicly traded life than Tesla did.
However, SpaceX reported a net loss in 2025, and there's no telling what challenges could throw a wrench in its ambitious plans. Investors may be better off taking a wait-and-see approach to SpaceX, monitoring its progress toward its goals rather than buying the stock based solely on the company's vision.
Tesla (TSLA - Free Report) ended the recent trading session at $420.60, demonstrating a +2.13% change from the preceding day's closing price. The stock outpaced the S&P 500's daily gain of 0.79%. On the other hand, the Dow registered a gain of 0.26%, and the technology-centric Nasdaq increased by 1.52%.
Coming into today, shares of the electric car maker had lost 0.97% in the past month. In that same time, the Auto-Tires-Trucks sector lost 5.32%, while the S&P 500 lost 1.82%.
The upcoming earnings release of Tesla will be of great interest to investors. The company is expected to report EPS of $0.45, up 12.5% from the prior-year quarter. Our most recent consensus estimate is calling for quarterly revenue of $24.32 billion, up 8.09% from the year-ago period.
Regarding the entire year, the Zacks Consensus Estimates forecast earnings of $2 per share and revenue of $101.11 billion, indicating changes of +20.48% and +6.63%, respectively, compared to the previous year.
Investors should also pay attention to any latest changes in analyst estimates for Tesla. These latest adjustments often mirror the shifting dynamics of short-term business patterns. As a result, upbeat changes in estimates indicate analysts' favorable outlook on the business health and profitability.
Our research reveals that these estimate alterations are directly linked with the stock price performance in the near future. To capitalize on this, we've crafted the Zacks Rank, a unique model that incorporates these estimate changes and offers a practical rating system.
The Zacks Rank system, running from #1 (Strong Buy) to #5 (Strong Sell), holds an admirable track record of superior performance, independently audited, with #1 stocks contributing an average annual return of +25% since 1988. Over the last 30 days, the Zacks Consensus EPS estimate has witnessed a 0.66% decrease. Tesla is currently a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).
In terms of valuation, Tesla is currently trading at a Forward P/E ratio of 206.11. For comparison, its industry has an average Forward P/E of 20.47, which means Tesla is trading at a premium to the group.
It's also important to note that TSLA currently trades at a PEG ratio of 9.79. The PEG ratio bears resemblance to the frequently used P/E ratio, but this parameter also includes the company's expected earnings growth trajectory. Automotive - Domestic stocks are, on average, holding a PEG ratio of 1.01 based on yesterday's closing prices.
The Automotive - Domestic industry is part of the Auto-Tires-Trucks sector. Currently, this industry holds a Zacks Industry Rank of 94, positioning it in the top 39% of all 250+ industries.
The Zacks Industry Rank is ordered from best to worst in terms of the average Zacks Rank of the individual companies within each of these sectors. Our research shows that the top 50% rated industries outperform the bottom half by a factor of 2 to 1.
Keep in mind to rely on Zacks.com to watch all these stock-impacting metrics, and more, in the succeeding trading sessions.
Tesla Stock OwnershipTesla went public on June 29, 2010 with shares priced at $17. Over a decade later, investors who bought in at the time of the IPO have been pleasantly rewarded. Investors who bought in other periods of time have also benefitted and grown their wealth, just like CEO Elon Musk.
Benzinga viewers of "PreMarket Playbook" were asked about their past and current Tesla stock ownership during the Tuesday, June 30 episode.
"Tesla went public 16 years ago on June 29, 2010. Which of the following best describes you?" Benzinga asked.
The results are:
Traded Tesla before, but don’t own: 53% Never owned Tesla stock (outside ETFs/mutual funds): 27% Currently own Tesla stock: 20% The poll results show that 53% of viewers polled have owned Tesla stock in the past, but don’t currently own. Add this with the 20% who said they currently own Tesla stock and the amount of people who have owned Tesla stock at some point would be 73%.
The remaining 27% of viewers said they have never owned Tesla stock outside of owning ETFs or mutual funds that own the electric vehicle stock, which would give them indirect ownership.
"PreMarket Playbook" airs on YouTube Monday through Friday at 8 a.m. ET and is hosted by Ryan Faloona. The poll in this story featured the answers of 214 viewers.
Tesla’s Lasting PopularityWhile it is unknown what percentages other popular stocks like the other Magnificent Seven members would get from Benzinga viewers, the fact that 73% of viewers polled say they have owned Tesla stock at some point is likely one of the higher figures for a public company.
With 20% of viewers still owning Tesla stock, that is also a bullish sign on the future of the company and comes with shares down 5% year-to-date in 2026.
Benzinga regularly publishes its most-searched ticker stories each month. For the month of May, Tesla was the fourth most searched ticker. For 2025, Tesla ranked second.
The stock regularly ranks among the top five most-searched tickers on Benzinga Pro each month. While searches don’t directly translate to ownership, they do indicate the importance of the company and the popularity.
A report from brokerage company Robinhood earlier this year showed that Tesla was the second top stock based on buys and sales for the Jan. 1 through May 1, 2026 period.
Tesla remains one of the most popular stocks on the planet. The recent IPO of SpaceX (NASDAQ:SPCX), a space company led by Musk, may have taken some of the luster away from Tesla.
With investors and fans of Musk wanting to bet on his future, they likely own Tesla and SpaceX stock. For others, looking for which stock may perform better, some investors may have sold off their Tesla stock to buy SpaceX stock.
Photo courtesy: Shutterstock
Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs
Tesla has begun testing a production version of its Cybercab that has two seats, but no steering wheel or pedals, in Austin, Texas. For now, the testing is being done with a safety monitor in the right passenger seat, according to a video posted on X, the social media platform owned by the electric car maker's CEO Elon Musk.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) could overtake SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) in market capitalization by July 2027, according to an analysis by OpenAI’s ChatGPT that considered the latest developments across Elon Musk’s companies.
The projection comes as SpaceX holds a market value of about $2.16 trillion following its historic initial public offering, while Tesla is valued at roughly $1.55 trillion, leaving a gap of about 28.5%.
According to the analysis, Tesla has a higher probability of delivering near-term commercial milestones that could drive faster valuation growth over the next 12 months.
The company continues to expand its autonomous driving ambitions through Full Self-Driving (FSD) updates, including Version 14, while increasing robotaxi operations in select U.S. cities.
Tesla is also preparing for Cybercab production and advancing Optimus, its humanoid robot platform, which is viewed as a potentially significant long-term revenue opportunity.
As a result, Tesla’s valuation is becoming increasingly tied to its artificial intelligence and robotics businesses rather than vehicle sales alone.
Based on these factors, ChatGPT estimates Tesla could reach a market capitalization of between $2.4 trillion and $2.7 trillion by mid-2027, allowing it to surpass SpaceX if execution remains on track.
Under the base-case scenario, Tesla would overtake SpaceX around July 2027 and hold a market value about 6% to 8% higher shortly after the crossover.
The case for SpaceX stock growth While Tesla may have the edge in near-term commercialization, ChatGPT noted that SpaceX continues to benefit from strong investor interest following its public market debut.
The company’s long-term growth strategy remains centered on Starship, Starlink, and artificial intelligence initiatives integrated through xAI.
SpaceX has advanced testing of its Starship V3 vehicle, featuring upgraded Raptor 3 engines, redesigned propulsion systems, and increased propellant capacity.
The company is also working toward orbital refueling demonstrations, expanding production facilities, and increasing launch capacity across multiple sites.
Meanwhile, Starlink remains SpaceX’s largest revenue driver and is widely viewed as the financial foundation supporting future Mars missions, lunar exploration projects, and broader space infrastructure ambitions.
The company also continues to play a key role in NASA’s Artemis program while pursuing potential uncrewed Mars missions later in 2026.
On the other hand, Tesla still faces regulatory and production risks tied to autonomous driving, Cybercab, and Optimus.
Meanwhile, SpaceX could retain its lead if Starship development progresses faster than expected, Starlink growth accelerates, or investors place greater value on its space infrastructure business.
Tesla (TSLA +0.83%) shares have had a magnificent run since their initial public offering in 2010. But over the past half-decade, they have only risen by 69% (as of June 26).
The S&P 500 index, by comparison, has generated a total return of 85%. Investors might be thrown off by the electric vehicle company's underperformance.
There is chatter about a merger between Tesla and Space Exploration Technologies. Assuming this potentially massive deal doesn't go through, where will Tesla's shares be in five years?
Image source: The Motley Fool.
Bringing AI to the physical world In 2025, Tesla's automotive revenue of $69.5 billion accounted for 73% of the company's entire top line. Founder and CEO Elon Musk wants the business to evolve from one-time sales like this. Tesla continues to develop its artificial intelligence capabilities in hopes of creating a major impact on the physical world.
Autonomous driving technology is one area. The Cybercab, which will supply the Robotaxi platform and full self-driving software to customers, is slowly progressing.
With Optimus, robotics is the other focus. Tesla is preparing its Fremont factory to eventually produce 1 million robots per year. In 2024, Musk said that he believed Optimus would one day lift the company's total market capitalization to $25 trillion.
It's impossible to know the exact timeline for these two strategic priorities. In five years, Tesla's sales and profit mix could look fundamentally different from today. If autonomous driving and robotics take longer than planned, then the company likely won't change much.
Today's Change
(
0.83
%) $
3.43
Current Price
$
415.27
Expectations will be hard to beat Any objective observer of Tesla would come away impressed by what the business is trying to do. However, the ambitions of all this technological innovation must eventually result in a financial windfall. This is the company's biggest question.
The market is extremely bullish, which is not a shock given the benefit of the doubt that Elon Musk receives from supporters. Tesla shares trade at an eye-watering price-to-earnings ratio of 347. This is a stock priced for perfection.
Assume that Tesla's valuation is the same in June 2031, and earnings per share would need to expand 100% for the stock to double.
This profit forecast, while encouraging, most likely wouldn't satisfy the investment community. The market has extremely high hopes. And its patience will eventually be put to the test.
I think the only way Tesla's stock becomes a big winner over the next five years is if the company rapidly commercializes its Robotaxi service worldwide, while simultaneously scaling Optimus manufacturing and selling them in commercial settings. These trends need to develop to the point where they start to have a sizable impact on Tesla's financial performance.
The stock's extreme valuation makes me doubtful that even notable fundamental improvements will make Tesla a winning portfolio addition over the coming five years.
Our 24/7 Wall St. price target for Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA | TSLA Price Prediction) is $416.37, modestly above where the stock trades today. With shares at $411.84, the implied move is roughly 1.1% over the next 12 months. That puts Tesla in hold territory by our model, with a confidence level of 90%. The setup is measured: after a year that included a 27.26% one-year gain, near-term reward looks balanced against risk.
24/7 Wall St. Price Target Summary Metric Value Current Price $411.84 24/7 Wall St. Price Target $416.37 Upside 1.1% Recommendation HOLD Confidence Level 90% A Choppy First Half Sets the Stage Tesla is down 8.42% year to date and 5.5% over the past month, though shares popped 8.46% on June 29 alone. The stock sits roughly 16% below its 52-week high of $498.83 and well above the $288.77 low.
Q1 2026 was a real turn: revenue of $22.39B grew 15.8% YoY, non-GAAP EPS came in at $0.41 versus a $0.36 estimate, and auto gross margin expanded to 21.1% from 16.2%. Services revenue grew 42% and free cash flow more than doubled to $1.44B. That reset the narrative after a soft FY2025, when revenue fell 2.93% and net income dropped 46.79%.
The Case for $480+ Bulls have a real shot to break the model. Our internal bull-case scenario points to $481.13 over 12 months, a 16.83% return.
The catalysts are concrete: Cybercab, Tesla Semi, and Megapack 3 all targeting 2026 volume production; Optimus Gen 3 unveiling in Q1 with stated capacity of 1M robots per year at Fremont and 10M at the Texas Gigafactory; FSD v14.3 deployed in April; and Robotaxi expansion to Dallas and Houston with unsupervised rides.
The $2B SpaceX equity tie-up and the chip-fab partnership at Gigafactory Texas add a strategic kicker. The Street’s average target sits at $421.16, with 23 Buy ratings.
The Risks Worth Watching The bear scenario takes Tesla to $361.77, a 12.16% drawdown. Valuation is the headline risk at 407x earnings against a 4.59% operating margin. FY2025 vehicle deliveries fell 9%, Q4 deliveries dropped 16%, and inventory days rose to 27 from 22.
Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and Tesla didn't make the cut. Grab the names FREE today.
Operating expenses jumped 37-50% YoY on AI R&D and the CEO award. Bulls would argue that op-ex surge reflects investment in Optimus, Dojo 3, and AI5 that should pay off over multiple years, and that the Q1 26 margin recovery suggests the auto cycle has turned.
Still, 7 Sell ratings exist, insider activity skews to net selling, and prediction-market sentiment turned down 18.58 points in seven days.
Hold for Now The 24/7 Wall St. price target of $416.37 implies hold at 90% confidence. The factor tipping the scale is the gap between fundamentals and price: Q1 momentum is real, but valuation already prices in flawless execution on robotaxi, Optimus, and energy.
The bull case strengthens if FSD wins regulatory clearance in China or the EU at scale and Q2 deliveries clear 475,000 units. The thesis weakens if auto margins compress again or Optimus slips past Q4 2026.
Tesla Price Prediction 2026-2030 Extending our model with current growth trajectories and reasonable multiple compression on the AI/robotaxi optionality, here is where the 24/7 Wall St. price target points over five years.
Year 24/7 Wall St. Price Target 2026 $416 2027 $432 2028 $449 2029 $465 2030 $482 These projections assume Tesla keeps executing on Cybercab, Optimus, and energy storage. A material acceleration in robotaxi monetization could push the 2030 path toward the $629.88 bull case, while a stalled FSD rollout could drag toward the $374.15 bear path.
Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and Tesla didn't make the cut. Grab the names FREE today.
Elon Musk recently said he thinks Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX +7.18%), or SpaceX, could be generating $1 trillion in annual revenue by 2030. That's an astounding projection given that the business generated roughly $18.7 billion in sales last year. For some additional context, the business grew revenue 33% annually to reach last year's revenue level.
If SpaceX were to reach $1 trillion in revenue by 2030, the company would need to grow its revenue roughly 5,248% over 2025's figure to hit that target. In other words, the company would need to grow its revenue at an average annual rate of 121.6% each year to hit that target -- an enormous rate of growth to deliver on average over a five-year period. On the other hand, the target could start to look far more reachable if it factors in an anticipated merger between SpaceX and Tesla (TSLA +8.49%).
Image source: Getty Images.
Is a Tesla merger Musk's path to getting SpaceX to $1 trillion in revenue? Last year, Tesla posted roughly $94.83 billion in annual revenue. Notably, the company's sales actually declined roughly 3% year over year in the period -- marking the first-ever annual revenue decline in the business's history.
If you combined Tesla's and SpaceX's revenue for 2025, you'd reach roughly $103.5 billion in annual sales. Based on that figure, the combined business would need to grow revenue at a 57.4% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) over a five-year period.
That CAGR actually looks far more achievable because SpaceX grew revenue 33% last year, and it seems like there's a good chance that sales growth will actually accelerate this year, thanks to new artificial intelligence (AI) processing deals with Alphabet and other customers, along with continued growth for the company's rocket-launching and Starlink services.
Today's Change
(
7.18
%) $
11.01
Current Price
$
164.24
With Tesla revenue currently declining and accounting for the vast majority of the two companies' combined revenue, the electric vehicle (EV) business could actually be a substantial drag on CAGR if the two companies were combined. Overall demand in the EV market has cooled, and Tesla in particular has seen significant declines in vehicle sales.
On the other hand, it's not unreasonable to expect Tesla to start recording real revenue from its robotaxi and humanoid robotics businesses within the next five years, offsetting potential continued declines in automotive revenue.
With the monumental growth needed to get SpaceX to $1 trillion in sales within the next five years in mind, it's possible that Elon Musk is hinting that a merger between SpaceX and Tesla is on the horizon. Of course, it's possible that he really believes SpaceX alone will reach $1 trillion in revenue by 2030. It's also possible that the famously ambitious tech leader is throwing out highly optimistic projections to help generate excitement among investors and shore up support for the company's highly growth-dependent valuation.
We'd love to learn more about your experiences on GuruFocus.com and how we can improve!
Take Survey
Follow Us
Disclaimers
GuruFocus.com is not operated by a broker or a dealer. Under no circumstances does any information posted on GuruFocus.com represent a recommendation to buy or sell a security. The information on this site, and in its related newsletters, is not intended to be, nor does it constitute investment advice or recommendations. The individuals or entities selected as "gurus" may buy and sell securities before and after any particular article and report and information herein is published, with respect to the securities discussed in any article and report posted herein. Gurus may be added or dropped from the GuruFocus site at any time. In no event shall GuruFocus.com be liable to any member, guest or third party for any damages of any kind arising out of the use of any content or other material published or available on GuruFocus.com, or relating to the use of, or inability to use, GuruFocus.com or any content, including, without limitation, any investment losses, lost profits, lost opportunity, special, incidental, indirect, consequential or punitive damages. Past performance is a poor indicator of future performance. The information on this site, and in its related newsletters, is not intended to be, nor does it constitute investment advice or recommendations. The information on this site is in no way guaranteed for completeness, accuracy or in any other way. The gurus listed in this website are not affiliated with GuruFocus.com, LLC. Stock quotes are provided by QuoteMedia, Inc. (CSI). Company fundamental data is provided by Morningstar. Analyst estimates data is sourced from both Refinitiv and Morningstar, with priority given to Refinitiv data. Data is updated daily.
Tesla (TSLA +8.49%) has faced several challenges this year. Between macroeconomic issues that have affected broader equities -- the electric vehicle (EV) maker hasn't escaped this -- runaway capex spending that isn't yet paying off, and mixed financial results, the stock is down 6% to date, while the S&P 500 has climbed 8%. However, there are some reasons to think Tesla's shares could jump after July 2 and perform well through the rest of the year, although, of course, we can't be absolutely certain. Still, let's consider some reasons to be bullish on Tesla's short-term outlook.
Image source: The Motley Fool.
Can deliveries surprise the market? Tesla's financial results haven't been that strong partly because of a slowdown in the EV market. In the first quarter, EV sales in the U.S. dropped by 27% year over year. But what if Tesla's second-quarter EV deliveries and sales surprise Wall Street? Some people think that's what may happen. Mark Delaney, an analyst at Goldman Sachs (GS +0.06%), recently argued that Tesla's Q2 deliveries may exceed expectations, based on sales data from several regions including China and Europe. The analyst raised his second-quarter Tesla delivery projection to 420,000, up from 405,000.
Note that this would represent a solid 9% increase from its Q2 2025 deliveries. True, the company also saw deliveries increase year over year in the first quarter. They rose 6% compared to the year-ago period. However, during the first period, Tesla deliveries came in below expectations. Delaney's forecast of 420,000 is well ahead of the consensus estimate of between about 396,466 and 406,024, depending on the source. Provided Tesla can exceed expectations when it releases its second quarter delivery numbers, probably around July 2, the company's shares might jump.
Today's Change
(
8.49
%) $
32.23
Current Price
$
411.94
Other important updates on the horizon? Tesla's CEO, Elon Musk, said that the company would reveal Optimus 3, the next generation of its humanoid robot, in late July or early August. This might provide yet another boost to the company's share price. There could be significant demand for humanoid robots -- especially from businesses -- provided they can perform certain tasks well and be manufactured cost-effectively at scale. Optimus 3's reveal might tell us at least one of those things. And if it is nearly as impressive as Musk claimed it would be, that could jolt the company's stock. Several other developments may help Tesla maintain strong momentum through the end of the year, including its work on self-driving vehicle capabilities. Tesla's robotaxi ambitions are a key part of the company's long-term vision. That's why the market may reward meaningful progress on that front.
Is Tesla stock a buy? Investors should avoid focusing on short-term gains. So, even if Tesla's stock performs well over the next six months, the more important question is whether the company is a good long-term investment. There certainly are good reasons to think so. The company is still a leader in the EV space and may establish itself as a top player in the humanoid robot market in the future, while scaling its potentially lucrative robotaxi business. However, there are significant risks as well. One of the biggest may come from regulators. Tesla has already encountered some challenges in this department. The federal EV tax credit expired in the U.S. last year, which may lead to lower demand in the medium term.
There are other potential regulatory roadblocks the company might encounter, including challenges in obtaining approval for its self-driving software. And so far, we are only considering Tesla's EV business. It will likely face similar problems with its humanoid robot project, especially if some lawmakers think it could harm the labor market. Meanwhile, Tesla is facing increasing competition from companies like Rivian (RIVN +7.55%), which recently launched the R2, a competitor to the Model Y. And amid all that, Tesla's valuation remains eye-popping. The company is trading at 196x forward earnings. The market is expecting a lot from Tesla, and the company's shares might move sideways (or worse) over the next few years if it fails to make significant progress with various endeavors. So, is the stock worth investing in right now?
For those comfortable with significant volatility and who intend to hold Tesla's shares for a while, it may be worth initiating a small position.
SummaryCompaniesChina leads substitution push, with government support and EV makersAnalysts say substitution is gradual, limited by efficiency and emissionsSee Factbox on substitution and companies involved read more LONDON/SHANGHAI/BEIJING/DETROIT, June 30 (Reuters) - Ferrari and BMW are rolling out new models featuring lightweight, cost-effective aluminium wiring, accelerating a shift away from copper, the dominant material in electric wiring since the invention of the electric battery two centuries ago.
The decisions follow similar moves by Tesla and Chinese EV makers and reflect a broader industry trend forecast to affect around 2% of global copper demand this year, according to JPMorgan.
Stay up to date with the latest news, trends and innovations that are driving the global automotive industry with the Reuters Auto File newsletter. Sign up here.
Even more copper could be switched to aluminium in the coming years because of a structural rise in copper prices, driven by shortages of the metal and with increased demand from the green-energy sector and data centres.
Companies across several sectors are migrating to aluminium because of far lower prices and comparable performance, according to Reuters interviews with 18 carmakers, cable and air conditioning companies, metals producers and consultants. Ferrari and BMW said they chose aluminium in part because of its lighter weight.
Substitution of aluminium for copper has come in waves over two decades, but record copper prices in late January, peaking close to $15,000 per metric ton, added weight to the case for switching to aluminium. Forecasts for global supply fall short of those for demand for more than the next decade.
LIGHTER AND FASTERFerrari (RACE.MI), opens new tab, which already uses aluminium for its bodies, engines and chassis, told Reuters it started using the lightweight metal for power cables on its 296 hybrid sports car last year. Ferrari has since introduced aluminium wiring into other models, including the Luce, its first ever EV launched last month.
The move saves up to 20% of the total wiring weight, said Ferrari communications executive Dario Esposito.
"We are not choosing aluminium because it's cheaper, we choose the material that has better performance," he said.
But the metal is, in fact, much cheaper — currently about $3,100 a ton, or about a quarter the price of copper.
Germany's BMW (BMWG.DE), opens new tab said it first used aluminium conductors in 2011 in its subcompact 1 series and progressively expanded substitution in hybrids and EVs. Currently, it uses a large number of aluminium cables in both high and low-voltage systems in its latest eDrive EV technology, launched last year.
The world’s fourth-biggest automaker, Stellantis <STLAM.MI, opens new tab>, also recently started swapping copper wiring for aluminium, according to an industry source familiar with the matter. Stellantis declined to comment.
PRICE VERSUS PERFORMANCEChinese EV parts supplier JONVER has seen sales of aluminium wiring products jump this year to about 30% of its sales from about 20% in 2023, said sales director Feng Lu.
Norwegian aluminium producer Hydro (NHY.OL), opens new tab said sales of aluminium heating-and-air tubing as a copper substitute have steadily grown in recent years. Hydro CFO Trond Olaf Christophersen said the company expects to gain market share as aluminium rapidly replaces copper in the sector in future years.
Xavier Mathieu at France-based Nexans (NEXS.PA), opens new tab, the world's second-biggest cable manufacturer, said manufacturers will still buy copper at higher prices because it performs better in certain applications — but they start buying aluminium when copper prices reach about 3.5 times higher.
Copper prices currently stand at more than 4.2 times the price of aluminium.
Several issues complicate firms' decisions to swap, including U.S. tariffs and the huge amount of energy needed to produce aluminium , which means more greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, aluminium is cheap but less efficient: It requires more aluminium to conduct the same amount of electricity.
Still, JPMorgan outlined a scenario in which about 6% of annual demand for copper might be replaced by aluminium by 2030, compared to 2% this year.
CHINA EV MAKERS TAKE THE LEADThe government in the world's biggest metals consumer, China, encouraged companies to make the switch to aluminium in a March 2025 policy paper seen by Reuters, and many have heeded the call.
Analysts at consultancy Zhuochuang forecast that about 25% to 30% of components currently made from copper, by metal volume, could be switched to aluminium in the power, automotive and home-appliance sectors by 2030.
Chinese EV makers that have switched to aluminium wiring include AVATR, XPeng (9868.HK), opens new tab and Xiaomi (1810.HK), opens new tab, said Terry Woychowski, president at engineering consultancy Caresoft Global, which takes apart vehicles and examines their components.
The three Chinese EV makers and Tesla did not respond to requests for comment.
Lightweight aluminium is especially attractive to EV makers because cutting weight allows for longer driving ranges. And saving money is crucial for EV firms in China, where a price war has left margins razor-thin. And aluminium has ample room to gain ground in autos, where about 85% of electrical wiring busbars, which connect an EV's battery to its systems, are still copper, according to Hydro.
The Chinese auto industry has benchmarked Tesla (TSLA.O), opens new tab, a pioneer in using aluminium for wiring when it introduced its Model Y in 2019, and more recently in its Cybertruck, Woychowski added.
Reporting by Eric Onstad in London, Amy Lv in Shanghai, Ju-min Park in Beijing, Kalea Hall in Detroit; Editing by Veronica Brown, Claudia Parsons
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab
Ju-min Park is a senior correspondent for Reuters based in Beijing, covering the automobile industry. She began her career at Reuters since 2010 and previously reported on the Korean peninsula and Japan.
Kalea Hall reports on the automotive industry, focusing on the Detroit Three automakers, from Detroit. Kalea was previously an automotive reporter at The Detroit News daily newspaper where she covered the auto industry and General Motors for more than five years. She’s been a professional reporter since 2013, when she started at The Vindicator, a daily newspaper in Youngstown, Ohio and her hometown paper. Growing up in an auto plant town inspired Kalea to deeply understand the industry, and helped her report award-winning stories for The Vindicator. At The Detroit News, she worked collaboratively with a team to break news and write comprehensive pieces. Kalea has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Point Park University in Pittsburgh and a master’s degree in journalism from Michigan State University.
Tesla (TSLA) rose 6.26% intraday after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration formally closed its engineering analysis into power steering loss affe
Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) shares are rallying Monday and there are multiple potential drivers. Here’s what you need to know.
Tesla stock is showing exceptional strength. What’s fueling TSLA momentum? What’s Moving TSLAAnalyst commentary is adding fuel ahead of Tesla’s delivery numbers later this week. JPMorgan has argued Tesla is being deliberate rather than lagging on robotaxis, saying software readiness matters more than fleet size right now and highlighting continued gains in FSD performance.
Safety Probe ClosureU.S. safety regulators also closed their investigation into power steering loss in about 376,000 Model 3 and Model Y vehicles from the 2023 model year. The probe ended after Tesla’s recall and over-the-air fix, removing a possible overhang that had been hanging over the name, Reuters stated.
That kind of regulatory cleanup does not always create a huge move by itself, but it can help sentiment when the stock already has other bullish catalysts in play. In a market trading on narratives, fewer headline risks can matter.
Critical Levels To Watch For TSLA StockTesla has pushed back above several short term trend markers, including the 20‑day simple moving average at $400.21, the 50‑day at $405.17, and the 100‑day at $397.80. Even with that improvement, the stock still sits 2.2% under the 200‑day simple moving average at $418.27. That combination usually signals a recovery phase inside a broader repair process rather than a fully established long term uptrend.
Momentum is best captured through RSI, which is currently at 52.94. This level is neutral and fits a stock that is trying to rebuild direction after a volatile stretch. RSI helps identify whether buying or selling pressure has become excessive, and in this case it shows that TSLA is not stretched despite Monday’s strength.
The larger technical obstacle remains the death cross that appeared in April, when the 50‑day simple moving average slipped below the 200‑day. That pattern often keeps longer term sellers active during rallies. The April swing low and the May swing high also show that TSLA has been trading inside a wide consolidation zone rather than trending cleanly.
Key Resistance: $453.00 — A nearby round number and pivot area where rebounds have stalled before, and where sellers may try to slow momentum as the stock approaches the 52‑week high region. Key Support: $393.50 — A close support zone near the 100‑day simple moving average where buyers have recently stepped in to defend the trend. TSLA Shares Are SoaringTSLA Price Action: Tesla shares were up 7.95% at $409.91 at the time of publication on Monday, according to Benzinga Pro.
Image: Shutterstock
Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs
ToplineElon Musk on Monday regained his trillionaire status as rallying SpaceX and Tesla shares added more than $60 billion to his net worth, after he fell below the trillion-dollar threshold last week following a sharp decline in SpaceX’s stock and new restrictions on his Tesla equity.
The rocket maker’s trading debut quickly swelled the world’s richest person’s fortune.
Getty Images
Key FactsShares of SpaceX jumped 7.6% and Tesla’s surged by 8.6% as of Monday afternoon, raising Musk’s net worth by $62.3 billion––to above $1 trillion.
Musk holds 4.8 billion shares of SpaceX and another 350 million stock options with an exercise price of $8.40 per share, and earlier this month, Musk disclosed he holds about 700 million Tesla shares.
He remains the world’s richest person by far, ranking ahead of Google co-founders Larry Page ($288.7 billion) and Sergey Brin ($266.3 billion), but Musk’s fortune is well below a June 16 peak of $1.45 trillion.
Why did Musk lose his trillionaire status?Forbes last week removed $116 billion of restricted Tesla stock—accounting for a roughly 8% stake in the company—from estimates of Musk’s net worth after he gave up $7.1 billion in shares to cover the exercise price on all stock options he received as part of his 2018 CEO performance award. Those options were voided by a Delaware judge in 2024 and restored by the Delaware Supreme Court in 2025, and after the latter ruling, Tesla replaced the stock award with a new one that only pays off if he stays in a senior leadership role through January 2028. His net worth also declined as SpaceX shares erased their 41% post-IPO surge.
key backgroundMusk—who has ranked the world’s richest person since May 2024—became the world’s first trillionaire after SpaceX’s record-setting IPO earlier this month boosted his net worth to $1.1 trillion. It became Musk’s latest wealth milestone, after in December 2024 he became the first person to be worth $400 billion, and later became the first to reach the $500 billion, $600 billion, $700 billion, $800 billion and $900 billion thresholds through early 2026.
tangentTesla shareholders approved a compensation package for Musk in November that, on its own, could be worth close to $1 trillion, should the company achieve several goals over the next decade.
further readingForbesElon Musk Is No Longer A TrillionaireBy Matt Durot
Tesla (TSLA +8.49%) is still one of the most important automakers in the world, even though investors are currently focused on Elon Musk's other public company, Space Exploration and Technologies Corp (SPCX +7.18%). That said, Tesla's stock has been holding up fairly well over the past year, rising around 17% as of this writing, just shy of the 18% gain for the S&P 500 index (^GSPC +1.18%).
Most investors expect the market to return 10% a year, on average, so it is hard to complain about 17%. Still, GE Vernova's (GEV +5.37%) stock price has doubled over the past 12 months as of this writing. And Caterpillar (CAT +3.58%) shares have risen by more than 150%. Can these two industrial giants, which aren't nearly as headline-grabbing as Tesla, keep up the outperformance?
Image source: Getty Images.
Cat and GE Vernova have huge backlogs Caterpillar makes massive earth-moving equipment and generators for creating energy in remote areas. GE Vernova makes the turbines used to generate power, along with other vital energy-producing and storing systems. They are both massive industrial businesses, with Cat supporting a $450 billion market cap and GE Vernova supporting a $280 billion market cap.
That said, the products these companies make take a long time to build. So customer orders are usually placed well in advance. At the end of the first quarter of 2026, Cat had a record backlog of $63 billion. That was up 79% year over year. GE Vernova's backlog stood at $163 billion at the end of the first quarter. While backlog orders can end up being canceled if business activity slows down during a recession, the huge backlogs these two companies have speak to a very strong operating environment.
Today's Change
(
3.58
%) $
35.72
Current Price
$
1033.19
From a business perspective, there's no particular reason to believe either company will suddenly face severe hardship. Moreover, both lean into the significant demand for power driven by technologies such as artificial intelligence and electric vehicles. Caterpillar's earth-moving equipment is needed to build data centers and power plants, while its generators can provide power directly to data centers. GE Vernova sells turbines that utilities use to generate power, among other products. With electricity demand expected to increase by 60% between 2025 and 2045, these businesses are well-positioned for success.
Stock prices and business fundamentals don't always align The problem here is that, sometimes, Wall Street gets too excited about a company's business prospects. When that happens, shares are bid up to levels that discount the good news. Basically, the price already assumes all of the good news, even if it hasn't happened yet. And that can create material risk for shareholders. With GE Vernova up 100% in a year and Cat up 150%, you need to consider both the business and the valuation before buying.
The big problem here is Caterpillar, which has a price-to-sales ratio of 6.6x versus a five-year average of 2.5x. The price-to-earnings ratio is roughly 50x compared to a longer-term average of about 19x. It looks rather expensive right now. If you don't own it, you may want to keep it on your wishlist. During the next bear market, the price is likely to be far more compelling than it is today.
Today's Change
(
5.37
%) $
56.07
Current Price
$
1101.24
GE Vernova is a bit more difficult to value because it has been a stand-alone business for only a few years. Its P/S ratio is 7.2x, and its P/E ratio is 30x. Neither of those figures is low on an absolute basis, so it would be hard to call the stock cheap. And management just increased its full-year guidance after just a single quarter, so the business is operating very strongly. Still, most investors should probably tread with a little caution. If Wall Street's mood shifts in a negative direction, this high flyer is likely to get caught in the downdraft.
One to watch and one to consider As businesses, both Cat and GE Vernova are likely to remain strong performers over the long term. But Wall Street doesn't always get price and value right over the short term. Between Cat and GE Vernova, GE Vernova is probably the more appealing choice right now. But given the lofty valuation on an absolute basis, it would be advisable to build a position over time rather than jumping in with both feet. Cat is probably best kept on the wishlist for now.
The ARK Innovation ETF (NYSEARCA:ARKK) has barely moved this year, gaining about 2% year to date through late June and sitting at roughly $78 per share.
Tesla stock TSLA jumped on Monday as investors looked ahead to the company's second-quarter delivery report later this week, while fresh comments from Chief Executive Elon Musk provided an additional boost to sentiment.
The stock rose around 4% in early trading to $396.64, recovering some ground after a difficult week for the electric vehicle maker.
The broader market was also supportive, with the S&P 500 gaining 0.8% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average advancing 0.3%.
Investors are now focused on Tesla's second-quarter delivery figures, scheduled for release on Thursday.
Analysts currently expect Tesla to report deliveries of approximately 405,000 vehicles, up from roughly 384,000 vehicles delivered during the same period a year earlier.
Part of Monday's rally appeared linked to comments Musk made on social media regarding Tesla's Full Self-Driving technology.
Musk said Tesla had begun rolling out a new version of its Full Self-Driving software for customers using AI3 hardware, the onboard computer platform introduced in 2019.
Newer Tesla vehicles are equipped with AI4 hardware, which was introduced in 2023 and offers significantly greater computing capability.
"Nice work by the [Tesla AI team]!" Musk wrote on X.
"The AI3 computer only has about 15% of the effective memory bandwidth of AI4, so this was a tough challenge," he added.
The update could potentially expand the addressable market for Tesla's Full Self-Driving subscription service by improving functionality for owners of older vehicles.
Tesla currently charges $99 per month for Full Self-Driving, which can perform most driving tasks under driver supervision.
Wall Street analysts have become increasingly optimistic about Tesla's upcoming delivery results following stronger-than-expected sales data from several key markets.
Morgan Stanley raised its second-quarter delivery forecast to approximately 413,000 vehicles from a prior estimate of roughly 373,000 units.
The firm cited stronger registration trends in Europe and improving demand in China as key drivers behind the upgrade.
According to Morgan Stanley, Europe provided the largest source of upside, with registrations running significantly above year-earlier levels as the region continued recovering from a weaker 2025.
China also showed improving momentum, with domestic sales rebounding in May after two consecutive months of annual declines.
Despite the higher delivery forecast, Morgan Stanley maintained its $415 price target and remained cautious on Tesla's energy storage business, forecasting second-quarter deployments of 11.8 gigawatt-hours compared with Street expectations of roughly 14.3 gigawatt-hours.
Barclays also raised its delivery expectations and now forecasts approximately 418,000 vehicle deliveries for the quarter.
The brokerage expects European deliveries to reach approximately 90,000 units during the quarter, representing Tesla's strongest regional performance since 2023.
China deliveries are projected at roughly 135,000 vehicles, supported by improving domestic demand and export activity.
Production is expected to reach about 430,000 vehicles during the quarter, while inventory levels remain well below the elevated build seen during the first quarter.
Barclays maintained its Equal Weight rating and $360 price target, while noting that investor attention has increasingly shifted away from Tesla's automotive operations toward its longer-term artificial intelligence initiatives.
The firm said investors remain focused on programs such as Robotaxi, Optimus, and autonomous driving technology, even as stronger vehicle deliveries remain important for generating the cash flow needed to fund those ambitions.
In its latest autonomous vehicle roadmap, JPMorgan noted that Waymo has 640 autonomous vehicles registered in Texas, compared with just 84 for Tesla, even after Tesla expanded its robotaxi footprint beyond Austin into Dallas and Houston this year. Rather than viewing the gap as a competitive weakness, the firm argues Tesla is intentionally prioritizing software readiness over fleet expansion.
Why Tesla’s Robotaxi Fleet Is SmallerJPMorgan said Tesla has taken a deliberately measured approach to its robotaxi rollout despite investor excitement around the company’s autonomous driving ambitions.
“Our view. Tesla has been cautious in its robotaxi rollout in Austin, and more recently in Dallas and Houston,” the analysts wrote. “On the 1Q call, Tesla management talked about taking a very cautious approach to the rollout of robotaxis.”
According to the note, Tesla believes there are still “many known improvements” that can be made to its Full Self-Driving software before deploying unsupervised vehicles at scale. As a result, the company sees little value in rapidly expanding its commercial fleet while major software upgrades remain in development.
That stands in contrast to Waymo, which has aggressively expanded across Texas after launching in Austin in March 2025 and has since entered Dallas, Houston and San Antonio. Of the company’s 640 Texas autonomous vehicles, JPMorgan estimates about 594 are Jaguar I-PACEs, while 46 are the new sixth-generation Ojai robotaxis.
Tesla’s FSD Progress Could Matter More Than Fleet SizeJPMorgan argues that the robotaxi race is not simply about who has the largest fleet today.
The firm highlighted continued improvements in Tesla’s Full Self-Driving software, noting that FSD version 14.x has surpassed 2,000 miles to critical disengagement, representing roughly a 4.3-fold improvement over the approximately 460 miles achieved by version 13.x.
The analysts also pointed to Tesla’s safety statistics, which show vehicles operating with FSD (Supervised) in North America average 5.5 million miles before a major collision, more than eight times the U.S. average, while traveling about 1.6 million miles before a minor collision, roughly seven times the national average.
Cybercab Could Change The PictureWhile Waymo currently enjoys a sizeable lead in deployed robotaxis, JPMorgan believes Tesla’s strategy is geared toward a much larger rollout once its software reaches the desired level of maturity.
The firm noted that Cybercab has already entered pilot production, with volume production expected later this year, potentially setting the stage for a much faster fleet expansion than investors are seeing today.
For now, the numbers heavily favor Waymo. But JPMorgan’s takeaway is that Tesla’s smaller robotaxi fleet reflects a conscious product strategy rather than an attempt to win the deployment race as quickly as possible.
Image via Shutterstock
Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs
Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.
McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.
His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.
A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.
TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.
McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.
I bought Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA | TSLA Price Prediction) again last Friday, and I will probably buy it again next month. The bears on Reddit and the seven analysts carrying Sell or Strong Sell ratings have not talked me out of it, and neither has a year-to-date drawdown of -15.57%.
I keep coming back to the buy button because Tesla is the rare company where the cash flow statement and the science fiction roadmap are now pointing the same direction, and I want to own that before the market decides it agrees.
The Thesis I Keep Coming Back To The simple version: Tesla is turning into a vertically integrated AI and robotics company that still happens to print real automotive profits. In Q1, automotive gross margin expanded to 21.1% from 16.2% a year earlier, revenue grew 15.78% YoY to $22.387 billion, and operating income jumped 135.84% to $941 million. The core business is widening.
Three Reasons The Conviction Holds First, the balance sheet. Tesla closed Q1 with $44.743 billion in cash and equivalents, up 173.62% YoY, against a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.10 and net cash on the books. Free cash flow climbed 117.47% to $1.44 billion, and full-year 2025 FCF rose 73.69% to $6.22 billion. A company with that much cash funds its own moonshots.
Second, the software flywheel. Active FSD subscriptions hit 1.28 million, up 51% YoY, and the Services and Other segment grew 42% to $3.745 billion. Unsupervised Robotaxi rides are already live in Dallas and Houston, and FSD just cleared regulators in the Netherlands. Recurring software revenue at automotive scale is a different business than building cars.
Third, the optionality. Elon Musk told investors on the Q1 call that “Optimus will be our biggest product, not just Tesla’s biggest product ever, but probably the biggest product ever.” The Fremont line is designed for 1 million robots a year and the Gigafactory Texas line for 10 million. I just need those numbers to be non-zero.
Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and Tesla didn't make the cut. Grab the names FREE today.
The Risk I Will Not Pretend Away The valuation is the real problem. A trailing P/E of 345, a PEG of 5.56, and EV/EBITDA of 116 leave no margin for error. Insiders have logged 32 recent transactions with net selling, and Polymarket traders give the Optimus release just a 9% probability by year-end. If FSD takes another year and Optimus slips into 2027, this stock can hurt.
What keeps me buying anyway is that the multiple is pricing the AI factory, and that AI factory is being built with real capex. CapEx is running at over $25 billion for 2026, R&D was $1.95 billion in Q1, and the AI5 chip taped out in April 2026. Every dollar of that spend is visible in the filings.
Why The Buy Button Stays Active Wall Street is split for a reason. 23 analysts rate Tesla a Buy and 24 do not, with a consensus target of $421.16 against today’s $379.71.
Ten-year holders are sitting on a 2,722.56% gain through every cycle of doubt. I am buying the company that funds its own future in cash, sells its software to over a million paying drivers, and has already built the line for the robot. The next decade just has to rhyme with the last.
Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and Tesla didn't make the cut. Grab the names FREE today.
Jay Li doesn’t recommend getting sued by Tesla if you’re trying to get a startup off the ground. But he does think his company, Proception, might be better off for having endured the experience.
“I think it’s kind of like a resilience test, or pressure test,” he told TechCrunch in an exclusive interview. “People say that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right?”
Li, who was a technical lead on Tesla’s Optimus humanoid robot program, was accused by his former employer last year of absconding with trade secrets to start Proception. But after months of trading legal blows, he finally reached a settlement with Tesla, which dismissed the lawsuit earlier this month. (Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.)
Now Li is free to tackle what he thinks is an even harder problem: making robot hands work like a human’s.
To help do that, Proception announced Monday that it has raised an $11 million seed round led by First Round Capital, with contributions from Y Combinator and early stage fund BoxGroup.
Proception also announced Monday that it is shipping the first batch of its “high-dexterity robotic hand” to “researchers and robotics companies,” while opening up to wider orders. The goal, Li said, is to become the top hand supplier to other companies that don’t want to spend the time or resources developing what’s known in the industry as “dextrous manipulation.”
While there’s been an avalanche of money and attention rushing into the world of robotics, Li believes not enough of that has gone to making robotic hands truly mimic a human’s hands.
One of the loudest voices talking about this challenge has actually been his old boss, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who has said robot hands are one of the biggest engineering problems yet to be solved.
While Musk has maintained that Optimus robots could start working in factories in a matter of years, the consensus view is that making robotic hands equivalent to a human’s is still many years away. Kevin Lynch, the director of Northwestern University’s Center for Robotics and Biosystems, told the Wall Sreet Journal last year that his team believes it will be a decade until they are “functional and useful and able to do some of the things that humans do.”
Li thinks Proception can do it much faster, in large part because of how they’re collecting data.
Most companies training humanoid robots right now are using teleoperators to train their systems. A human wearing a virtual reality headset is able to see what a robot sees and manipulate what’s in front of that robot, then the robot can learn from the commands given by the human.
A big drawback to this approach, according to Li, is that the teleoperator is not receiving feedback from the objects the robot is touching. This approach is also limited to the number of robots a company has available at any given moment, Li said.
Proception’s solution is a glove laden with sensors. With human testers wearing the gloves (and a headset), Proception and its customers can capture “human hand interaction data without requiring a robot in the loop,” according to Proception’s press release.
This same glove also goes on the hand Proception is developing, acting as its sensor-packed “skin.” The hand has 22 degrees of freedom and multiple joints per finger to enable a “wide range of dexterous motions,” according to Proception.
Li said this approach will also let Proception and its customers gather finer, more task-specific data that can allow its robotic hands to more accurately resemble a human’s. He also thinks it is better suited to scale up.
“You need both hardware and data, and those need to come hand-in-hand to get [dextrous manipulation] to work. A lot of companies solely focus on hardware, or like hardware plus non-scalable data [collection],” he said. “We’re working on this highly dexterous hardware plus highly scalable data. We believe that’s a key combination to solve this problem.”
First Round partner Bill Trenchard, who led the investment in Proception, said this was a big reason why he backed Li.
“We think they will have the best hand in the market, maybe the most sophisticated hand today, and the underlying data and models to support that,” he told TechCrunch. “Dexterous manipulation is a very, very, very important part of the whole humanoid story going forward, and as many people have said, it’s sort of the last mile of getting these robots to be truly performant.”
Trenchard also praised Li’s ability to keep a cool head while being sued by his former employer.
“He was very upfront with us when this came out, and I think the team did an amazing job of keeping their heads down,” Trenchard said. “Jay’s a very strong leader.”
Li is also confident. After facing down Tesla’s “hardcore litigation department,” he told TechCrunch that he wouldn’t be surprised if the company comes calling for help as Proception grows.
“I think it will happen,” he said.
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.
Sean O’Kane is a reporter who has spent a decade covering the rapidly-evolving business and technology of the transportation industry, including Tesla and the many startups chasing Elon Musk. Most recently, he was a reporter at Bloomberg News where he helped break stories about some of the most notorious EV SPAC flops. He previously worked at The Verge, where he also covered consumer technology, hosted many short- and long-form videos, performed product and editorial photography, and once nearly passed out in a Red Bull Air Race plane.
You can contact or verify outreach from Sean by emailing [email protected] or via encrypted message at okane.01 on Signal.
Here’s a look back at how much investors have made investing in the IPO.
Tesla went public on June 29, 2010, at a price of $17 per share. The company increased the size of the offering and priced it above an expected range of $14 to $16.
Back then, Tesla CEO Elon Musk was asked about the IPO in a Bloomberg interview and whether investors were taking a leap of faith by investing in the company.
"When people see who’s invested in the IPO, it’s the smartest, most long-term thinking investors in the market," he replied.
He added that “[it’s] worth noting that the smartest money in the world is betting on Tesla. They must have a reason for doing so."
Tesla shares closed up 40.5% to $23.84 on their first day of public trading. Over the last 16 years, the stock has been one of the top performers.
Investing $1,000 in Telsa IPOA $1,000 investment in Tesla shares at the IPO price of $ 17 could have purchased 58.82 TSLA shares.
Tesla had a five-for-one stock split in 2020, which would have converted 1 TSLA share into 294.10 TSLA shares. A three-for-one stock split in 2022 would have turned the IPO investment into 882.30 shares of TSLA.
Based on a price of $379.71 for Tesla at the time of writing, the $1,000 investment at IPO would be worth $335,018.13 today.
This represents a gain of 33,401.8% over the last 16 years.
Analysts and investors see multiple catalysts for Tesla ahead as the company shifts from being just an electric vehicle company to a company producing humanoid robots, having self-driving vehicles on the road and revenue growth from areas like energy storage and AI.
This article was previously published by Benzinga and has been updated.
Photo: Tada Images / Shutterstock
Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs
Tesla stock is holding steady today. Where is TSLA stock headed? The NHTSA RollercoasterQ2 Deliveries on the HorizonOn June 24, Tesla, Sunrun, and Renew Home announced a framework to deliver more than 16 gigawatts of flexible energy capacity to hyperscalers and utilities, aggregating millions of existing home batteries, smart thermostats, and electric vehicles into what would be the largest distributed power plant in the country.
The framework requires no new hardware, software, or interconnection, and is deployable in months, not years. In Virginia alone, the companies have more than 300 megawatts available for immediate deployment, expected to grow to at least 500 megawatts by 2030. The deal puts Tesla’s Powerwall and energy ecosystem at the center of the AI data center power crunch narrative.
Tesla Shares GainTSLA Price Action: At the time of publication, Tesla shares are trading 0.89% higher at $383.09, according to data from Benzinga Pro.
Image via Shutterstock
This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.
Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs
Tesla (TSLA +1.38%) is set to report its second-quarter vehicle deliveries in the first days of July -- something that will draw attention away from its more aspirational ventures like robotaxis and humanoid robots. The most important figure from the production and delivery update will likely be the year-over-year growth rate in deliveries.
The update will be timely, as deliveries are the most direct measure of whether demand for Tesla's cars is recovering after a difficult 2025 -- and this quarter is the first meaningful test of whether that recovery has staying power.
In 2025, Tesla delivered 1,636,129 vehicles, down 8.6% from nearly 1.8 million in 2024. The first quarter of 2026 brought a return to growth, with deliveries rising 6.3% year over year to 358,023. But there was a complication: Tesla produced about 50,000 more vehicles than it delivered -- a larger-than-usual gap between supply and demand that likely worried some investors.
So, can Tesla report a strong enough year-over-year growth rate to convince investors that a sustainable rebound in the company's automotive business is underway?
Tesla Cybercab. Image source: Tesla.
Here's the threshold Tesla needs to cross Wall Street's consensus calls for about 406,000 deliveries in the second quarter. Some of the more bullish forecasts run higher, at about 420,000. Either would clear the comparison that matters most: the 384,122 vehicles Tesla delivered in the second quarter of 2025.
Climbing back above that year-ago level would mean Tesla has put together two straight quarters of growth.
So, here's a simple way to frame the report: A number around 406,000 or higher would arguably signal that a meaningful recovery is on track. A figure near or above 420,000 would suggest momentum is building faster than expected. But a result that slips back toward last year's 384,122 would support the bear case, showing that the first-quarter bounce was temporary and that demand still isn't keeping pace with Tesla's production.
Today's Change
(
1.38
%) $
5.18
Current Price
$
380.30
Where the number gets decided While Tesla doesn't break out regional deliveries in its quarterly production and deliveries update, regional performance will be key to the overall figure.
Europe has reportedly recently turned from a weak spot into a source of growth for the company; Tesla's new-car registrations there more than doubled year over year in May, a sharp reversal from the steep declines that weighed on 2025. China, Tesla's second-largest market, has also reportedly held up well, helped by the refreshed Model Y.
The drag, however, may be the United States. With the tax credit having expired at the end of the third quarter of 2025, U.S. demand has cooled, and registrations there have reportedly tracked down by the mid-teens so far this year. So the second-quarter number probably comes down to one question: Is the strength in Europe and China enough to more than offset any domestic softness?
Still, even though the reported year-over-year growth rate for Tesla's deliveries will be an important figure to watch, it's clear that investors buy the stock for far more than its automotive business. After all, that's the only thing that could explain its astronomical valuation. Tesla stock trades at about 345 times earnings -- a multiple that only makes sense if investors are paying for self-driving software and robots rather than for simply electric cars.
But the car business still generates the majority of Tesla's revenue, so a soft delivery number would be a reminder of how far the company is from growing into its wild valuation.
Tesla shares are down about 16% so far in 2026, trading well below their December high near $490. So you can bet investors are hoping for some good news. With that said, the more important update will probably come later in July, when the company reports its full second-quarter results, which will include financials like revenue and cash flow, as well as the company's progress on its important Robotaxi operation and its longer-term ambitions, such as humanoid robots.
Tesla (TSLA +1.38%) and Elon Musk are making a big push to expand beyond electric vehicles (EVs). The company recently completed a tape-out for its upcoming AI5 computer chip, which will be deployed in new projects such as the Optimus humanoid robot.
Here's what the news means for Tesla and how it could impact the stock price in the years ahead.
Today's Change
(
1.38
%) $
5.18
Current Price
$
380.30
Expanding beyond vehicles A tape-out is when a computer chip design is sent to manufacturers for fabrication, essentially a final blueprint for the project. The AI5 chip has been sent to Samsung and Taiwan Semiconductor, with manufacturing planned to ramp over the next 12 to 18 months.
Tesla's latest chip boasts a 40x performance boost over the previous generation, and its goal is to help scale the two latest endeavors for the Musk technology company in humanoid robots and the Cybercab self-driving vehicle. Unlike other players in the robotics and self-driving car space, Tesla has designed its own chips, which should give it a cost advantage over those that rely on expensive suppliers like Nvidia.
In the long run, Tesla plans to build its own semiconductor manufacturing facility to further vertically integrate its robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) vision. The project, called Terrafab, will be built in Texas in conjunction with Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) and Intel. Like with its own chip designs, the theory is that this vertical integration will give Tesla a cost advantage as it scales up humanoid robot manufacturing in the years ahead.
Image source: Getty Images.
The future of Tesla stock Tesla is already working on designs for the AI6, which is reportedly being manufactured by Samsung. If you solely look at Musk's vision, there is a lot for shareholders to be excited about today. Who wouldn't want a future in which humanoid robots perform menial tasks, with everyone driven around by a self-driving Cybercab network?
Today's Change
(
1.38
%) $
5.18
Current Price
$
380.30
This vision is far from a reality right now. Plus, Tesla's stock already prices in much of this vision, which isn't guaranteed to come to fruition. Its market cap is $1.4 trillion, with a price-to-earnings ratio (P/E) of 348.
It is smart for Tesla to design its own chips and eventually build its own chip factories. However, many pieces still need to come together over the next decade, and executing the humanoid robot vision should keep investors away from the stock at today's $1.4 trillion market cap.
Brett Schafer has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Intel, Nvidia, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, and Tesla. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Tesla (TSLA) is evolving beyond electric vehicles, with artificial intelligence, autonomous driving, and energy storage becoming central to its long-term growth strategy. George Tsilis breaks down Tesla's Robotaxi rollout in Austin, advances in Full Self-Driving and A.I.
Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX +0.15%), or SpaceX, has been a publicly traded company for seven days. Tesla (TSLA +1.38%) stock has been public for 16 years. SpaceX is the newer, shinier Elon Musk toy, and it's getting more attention from the two companies' co-CEO today.
Right now, there's one reason you might want to own SpaceX stock over Tesla. But I'm not 100% convinced this is the right choice.
Image source: Getty Images.
What to know about SpaceX SpaceX has three main areas of business, which it calls Space (old-school SpaceX), Connectivity (SpaceX's Starlink subsidiary), and AI -- the division Musk formed by merging artificial intelligence company Grok into social media company X, before he merged both those companies into SpaceX.
Of the three, Space is the best-known business and the one from which SpaceX derives its name. Starlink is the company's only profitable business, earning $4.4 billion in operating profit last year, according to the SpaceX IPO Prospectus.
SpaceX sees its brightest future in artificial intelligence; however, it predicts this division will account for $26.5 trillion of its eventual $28.5 trillion total addressable market (TAM). It's also the business where SpaceX splashed out $60 billion to acquire Cursor last week.
Today's Change
(
0.15
%) $
0.23
Current Price
$
153.23
What to know about Tesla Tesla is a little different. Like SpaceX, Tesla has a core business: selling electric cars. This division accounted for 86.5% of Tesla's $94.8 billion in revenue last year, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence.
Tesla also has an Energy Generation and Storage business -- solar power and batteries. Similar to the situation with SpaceX's Starlink vis-à-vis Space, this corollary business is arguably better than the business for which the company is best known. "Energy" at Tesla earns 30% gross profit margins -- twice as profitable as Tesla's Automotive unit!
Last and least is Tesla's robotics business, currently just a start-up that lacks its own division, though robotics is analogous to "AI" at SpaceX. According to Elon Musk, this business that barely registers today could one day be building 1 billion humanoid robots a year and lift Tesla's market value past $25 trillion.
Today's Change
(
1.38
%) $
5.18
Current Price
$
380.30
Both SpaceX and Tesla are very expensive stocks. Investors in both companies are betting heavily on presently unfulfilled prospects: abundant AI profits in the case of SpaceX, and 1 billion robots a year for Tesla.
Which dreams are more likely to materialize in the future is hard to say. What I can tell you is how the two stocks' valuations look today to minimize the risk of overpaying for a future that may not materialize.
Let's start with SpaceX. The space company generated $19.3 billion in revenue over the past year and lost $8.7 billion in the process. SpaceX boasts about $70 billion in net cash, which is great -- because SpaceX is burning nearly $20 billion in negative free cash flow per year.
Tesla, on the other hand, seems a much more stable business. Annual sales approach $98 billion and are profitable, with an operating profit margin of 4.9%. Free cash flow is positive -- $7 billion annually -- adding to Tesla's $30 billion in net cash on the balance sheet.
Of the two, I prefer Tesla as the less risky of the two very risky stocks.
HomeIndustriesInternet/Online ServicesTech StocksTech StocksThe company’s pivot toward offering hardware access to rivals could hamstring its own AI goalsJune 27, 2026, 8:00 a.m. ET
SpaceX’s latest point of pride is its pivot toward becoming a provider of artificial-intelligence compute. But this new twist comes with its own slew of risks.
Over the last two months, SpaceX has notched deals with AI startups Reflection and Anthropic, as well as with Google parent Alphabet GOOG GOOGL. In return for some badly needed cash, SpaceX is giving those companies access to its expensive AI hardware.
Tesla logo is seen on the steering wheel of an electric vehicle at a dealership in Durango, northern Spain, October 30, 2023. REUTERS/Vincent West Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab
CompaniesJune 27 (Reuters) - U.S. safety regulators said on Saturday they had closed their probe into Tesla (TSLA.O), opens new tab vehicles over power steering loss, in view of a company recall which was carried out last year.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said the investigation, which had the status of an engineering analysis, covered about 376,241 Model 3 and Model Y vehicles from the 2023 model year.
Stay up to date with the latest news, trends and innovations that are driving the global automotive industry with the Reuters Auto File newsletter. Sign up here.
NHTSA opened a preliminary evaluation in July 2023 into loss of steering control reports in Tesla Model 3 and Y vehicles after some owners reported an inability to turn the steering wheel or an increase in required effort.
In early 2024, the probe was upgraded to an engineering analysis to further investigate the alleged defect.
Tesla recalled 376,000 of its vehicles in the U.S. in early 2025, due to a failure of the power steering assist feature that could make the vehicles harder to steer, particularly at low speeds, raising the risk of a crash.
However, it said the recall was not in response to NHTSA's investigation, which remained open at the time.
The recall said that Tesla had released an over-the-air software update designed to prevent overvoltage breakdown and overstress of motor drive components on the printed circuit board, which had caused an increase in steering effort.
In view of Tesla's recall, the NHTSA's Office of Defects Investigation said it was closing its engineering analysis.
Reporting by Disha Mishra in Bengaluru; Editing by Alexander Smith
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab
Is the SpaceX IPO a buy or a late bloomer in the making? Kathy Donnelly, trader and co-author of “The Lifecycle Trade”, analyzes the post-IPO volatility and compares the current chart to Tesla's early trading days.
Although Tesla (TSLA +1.38%) has proven willing to split its stock in recent years when such a move made sense, conditions in 2026 don't resemble those that prevailed ahead of its two prior splits.
Image source: The Motley Fool.
Why shareholders cheer stock splits Fundamentally, a stock split doesn't do anything to enhance a company's value. For example, if a stock gets split 5-for-1 (as Tesla stock did back in 2020), each investor sees the number of shares they own quintuple, but their ownership stake in the company stays the same. A single pre-split share priced at $1,000 is the same as five post-split shares priced at $200,
Yet there are a couple of reasons why some shareholders want to see stock splits. The first relates to investor psychology: A split makes the stock appear to have a more favorable entry price. The hope is that the lower face value will attract more retail investors. And people may feel they are getting more for their money when they are able to own more shares.
There is also research suggesting that splits can help boost stock prices. Data published by Statista, sourced from Bank of America's Research Investment Committee, revealed that, over 40 years, companies that split their stocks saw average total returns of more than 25% in the 12 months following the announcement of a pending split. But companies generally only conduct splits after the stock price has risen significantly, and when management expects further strong business performances in the future.
With that context in mind, here are the key price points connected to previous Tesla stock splits.
Tesla's stock-split history When Tesla management previously chose to split its stock, its shares were at much higher prices than they are currently. On Aug. 11, 2020, when Tesla announced a 5-for-1 stock split, shares were trading at a bit under $1,400, and they shot up to above $2,200 before the split.
On Aug. 5, 2022, Tesla announced its second split ever, a 3-for-1. The day before that split, shares were trading at nearly $900.
The stock is far from that level now, trading at around $375 on Thursday.
Today's Change
(
1.38
%) $
5.18
Current Price
$
380.30
The likelihood of a Tesla stock split in 2026 Based on the prices the stock traded at before its previous splits, it's improbable that Tesla will conduct one in 2026. History suggests that shares would need to nearly triple before such an action would even be considered.
Also, in the past, companies often chose to split their shares when they grew to prices that made them difficult for retail investors to purchase. But as fractional share investing is now available through most brokerages, companies may not see the need, even when shares reach unwieldy values. Instead, a higher stock price may be viewed as a strength, as it highlights investor demand.
For anyone considering investing in Tesla, its efforts in robotics, autonomous vehicles, robotaxis, and energy storage will be more important to the company's long-term returns on investment than any stock split.
