Seven Wall Street firms lowered their price targets on Tesla on Thursday, one day after the company reported second-quarter results that beat revenue estimates but missed on profitability by a wide margin.
Trust Securities, Morgan Stanley, Canaccord, JPMorgan, TD Cowen, Cantor Fitzgerald and Mizuho cut their price targets on the company, while Bank of America (BofA), Oppenheimer, and Needham have reiterated their valuation.
Shares opened about 8% lower at 341.00 on Thursday, after closing at $374.01 on Wednesday. As of press time, the stock was declining further and trading 12% lower.
Truist Securities analyst William Stein delivered the largest dollar cut of the group of seven analysts, lowering his price target by $60 to $370 — from $430 — while keeping a Hold rating on the stock.
The $370 figure implies approximately 1.1% downside from Wednesday’s close, making Truist the only firm in the group whose target sits below the current share price.
Q2 Earnings Report
Tesla posted revenue of $28.24 billion in the quarter, a 26.0% year-over-year increase that topped the compiled consensus of $27.58 billion.
Non-GAAP earnings of $0.33 a share fell 40.0% short of the $0.55 that 23 firms had supplied to the company’s own consensus.
Operating margin narrowed to 1.4% from 4.1% a year earlier, against a consensus of 5.4%.
Capital expenditure reached $5.79 billion, up 142% year on year, as the company pours cash into robotaxi infrastructure, Optimus manufacturing lines and AI compute.
$400–450
Morgan Stanley analyst Andrew Percoco cut his target by $17 to $400 from $417 — a figure that implies roughly 6.9% upside — maintaining an Equalweight rating.
Percoco had estimated 413,000 vehicle deliveries for Tesla in the second quarter, numbers largely surpassed when the company reported over 480,000 units earlier in July.
Canaccord analyst George Gianarikas dropped the target by $40 to $410.
The firm has kept a Buy rating on Tesla‘s shares, in which it sees a 9.6% upside.
JPMorgan analyst Rajat Gupta — who had upgraded Tesla to Neutral from Underweight only weeks ago, raising its target to $475 at the time — lowered the target by $30 to $445.
The new level implies approximately 19.0% upside, based on Wednesday’s closing price.
$450–485
Mizuho analyst Vijay Rakesh cut by $30 to $450 from $480 while keeping an Outperform rating, implying about 20.3% upside.
Rakesh had also cut the target after Q1 earnings in April, when he flagged slowing EV demand growth as a concern.
TD Cowen analyst Itay Michaeli has reduced the target by $30 to $460 from $490, maintaining a Buy rating and implying roughly 23.0% upside.
Michaeli has been among the more vocal bulls on Tesla‘s autonomy timeline, having said last year after testing FSD V14 and touring Giga Texas that autonomous vehicle scaling had become “a question of when, not if.”
Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Andres Sheppard has also lowered the target by $25 to $485, keeping an Overweight rating on the stock.
At $485, the target implies approximately 29.7% upside from Wednesday’s close — the widest gap of the seven.
Cantor had held the $510 target since Tesla‘s third-quarter 2025 earnings, when the firm raised it 43.7% after the company reported record deliveries of 497,099 vehicles.
Morgan Stanley
Percoco now models Tesla spending nearly $30 billion in capital expenditure in 2027, up from $20 billion previously.
Combined with lower EBITDA estimates — down 7% for fiscal 2026 and 12% for fiscal 2027 — the revision drives a projected free cash flow burn of roughly $14 billion in 2027, nearly triple the $5 billion Morgan Stanley had previously forecast.
The analyst framed the spending as unavoidable but flagged the absence of measurable returns.
“We view this as a necessary investment to establish and defend a leadership position in autonomy and robotics,” he wrote.
He reiterated that “the open question remains the timing of when we actually see the ROI — specifically, a scaled robotaxi network that demonstrates increasing density and improving safety within existing cities, plus tangible progress commercializing Optimus.”
Chief Financial Officer Vaibhav Taneja had raised the full-year 2026 capex ceiling to more than $25 billion on the Q1 call in April, up from a prior $20 billion target.
Cantor Fitzgerald
Sheppard called fiscal 2026 “a transformational year for the company as it transitions into autonomy, AI, robotics, and chips,” writing that the firm remains “bullish on Tesla at current levels with the stock down ~17% YTD” against a roughly 10% gain for the S&P 500.
The updated model reflects modest near-term adjustments.
“In our model, we update our FY26/FY27 vehicle deliveries assumption to ~1.71M/~1.83M units (from prior ~1.68M/~1.91M units), respectively, and we lower our FY26/FY27 storage deployed to ~59 GWh/80 GWh (from prior ~64 GWh/100 GWh), respectively,” Sheppard wrote.
Gross margin estimates were lowered to 18.0% and 19.3% for the two years, from 18.4% and 20.3%.
Cantor also raised its fiscal 2027 capex estimate to $26.3 billion from roughly $17.2 billion.
Two of Tesla‘s highest-profile products remain outside the model.
“In our estimates, we currently don’t model the Semi or Cybercab as we await further granularity in the unit economics (yet to be disclosed),” Sheppard wrote.
Cantor listed four key risks: delays in the Cybercab and Optimus timelines, regulatory hurdles for the robotaxi service, competition from Chinese automakers, and a broader slowdown in electric vehicle demand.
Mizuho
Rakesh struck a more constructive tone on demand, highlighting Tesla‘s 25% year-over-year delivery growth against a 33% decline at General Motors and a 14% increase at Rivian.
The analyst noted Tesla‘s order backlog reached its highest level since 2023 and maintained an Outperform rating, writing that the firm sees Tesla as “well-positioned leading physical AI with Cybercab/FSD traction and humanoid robotics longer term.”
Needham
Needham reiterated a Hold rating on the firm.
The firm highlighted that Tesla‘s automotive demand “has perked up against temporarily elevated gas prices,” but warned that “margins missed consensus estimates despite the unit beat” and flagged forward-looking headwinds.
The note singled out Rivian’s R2 as an emerging competitive threat, stating that the firm sees “further demand headwinds ahead as the Model Y faces its first legitimate competition from RIVN’s R2 vehicle.”
Rivian began R2 deliveries in late June and raised its full-year 2026 delivery forecast to 65,000 to 70,000 vehicles after a stronger-than-expected second quarter.
Tesla finished the second quarter with its largest order backlog since 2023 and delivered 480,126 vehicles globally.
Robotaxi service now covers seven metropolitan areas after launches in Miami, Orlando and Tampa earlier this month.
