Wall Street analysts remain divided over Tesla’s first-quarter delivery miss, as Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan have offered different readings of last week’s results.
Morgan Stanley remains bullish on the Elon Musk-led company, despite the quarterly delivery miss, while JP Morgan advised investors to have “high degree of caution” with the reaffirmed price target implying a downside of about 60%.
The company reported 358,023 vehicle deliveries and 408,386 units produced in the first quarter of 2026 — a 50,363-unit gap between vehicles produced and delivered.
Both figures represented year-over-year increases, with deliveries being slightly up by 6.3% and production jumping by 12.6%.
However, delivery numbers were below the Tesla-compiled consensus from 23 sell-side analysts, which estimated the company to report 365,645 vehicles delivered between January and March.
Additionally, the year over year comparison coincides with the period in which Tesla did the production transition to the 2025 Model Y.
Delivery Estimates
According to JP Morgan analyst Ryan Brinkman, Tesla‘s first quarter deliveries came in 4% below the most recent Bloomberg consensus of 372,000 units and 7% below JPMorgan’s own forecast of 385,000 vehicles.
The results were “fully -74% below the 1,366,000 vehicles Bloomberg consensus once expected for 1Q26 deliveries at the time expectations peaked on June 9, 2022,” the analyst added.
Morgan Stanley’s analyst Andrew Percoco noted, however, that the slower-than-expected results do not negatively impact the estimates for the rest of 2026.
The firm increased its yearly delivery forecast by about 2,000 units.
“We now forecast 1.6M vehicle deliveries in 2026 vs. 1.58M previously,” the analyst wrote in a new research note published this Monday.
Tesla delivered 1,636,129 vehicles in 2025, producing 1,654,667 units.
The figures include all models in its lineup — the best-selling Model Y and Model 3, the Cybertruck and the flagship Model S and Model X.
The two flagship models ended production on March 31, as the company progresses towards autonomy.
Tesla will use the previous models’ manufacturing lines for the upcoming production of the Optimus V3 humanoid robot.
The company’s CEO admitted earlier this year that it’s “probably true” that people will forget Tesla ever made cars after the humanoid.
Tesla‘s management has been stating that the only (personal) vehicle lined up for debut is the second generation of its Roadster model.
Musk stated in the latest earnings call that “long-term, the only vehicles that we’ll make will be autonomous vehicles, with the exception of the next generation Roadster” — which the company plans to unveil later this month.
Andrew Percoco further stated on Monday that Morgan Stanley expects “auto demand to reaccelerate,” with a “mid-teens volume delivery CAGR [compound annual growth rate] from 2026-2030.”
The figures will be supported by the combination of new model launches, the analyst stated, including a potential variant of the Cybertruck and the Model YL expansion.
Further improvements in the Full Self-Driving (FSD) software are also expected to drive demand.
Energy Storage
Tesla‘s energy storage (ESS) deployments also disappointed Wall Street, coming in at 8.8 GWh — 39% below the company-compiled consensus of 14.4 GWh and marking the first year-over-year decline since the second quarter of 2022.
The results fell by 42% compared to the 15.1 GWh modeled by JP Morgan.
Morgan Stanley analyst Andrew Percoco played down the miss, noting that large grid-scale projects are unstable.
“While this missed consensus expectations by 40%, the energy storage market (particularly large grid-scale storage, which makes up ~95%+ of Tesla‘s ESS volume) is inherently lumpy given ever-changing project timelines (due to permits, labor, interconnect approval, etc.),” Percoco wrote.
According to the analyst, “it’s far too early to call this quarter’s results a trend.”
Morgan Stanley expects demand to “remain relatively robust,” due to improving unit economics for utility-scale ESS and growing demand from data center customers.
Robotaxi as Stock Catalyst
Morgan Stanley has maintained its Equalweight rating on Tesla, with an unchanged price target at $415.
The price target implies an upside potential of 15.1% on the share value, considering last Thursday’s closing price of $360.59.
“Tesla‘s ability to scale the unsupervised robotaxi fleet is the most important catalyst for the stock this year,” Percoco wrote.
The firm expects “the stock to trade in close correlation to progress in the scaling of the unsupervised robotaxi fleet in Austin and the seven incremental city launches expected by the end of June.”
Disconnect in Valuation
JP Morgan, on the other hand, sees a downside of 59.8% on Tesla shares, based on its reaffirmed price target of $145.
Ryan Brinkman reiterated an Underweight rating on the stock, lowering its EPS (earnings per share) estimates for the upcoming earnings report.
According to Brinkman, the firm now expects first quarter EPS to decline to $0.30 from $0.43, with a 2026 outlook of $1.80, down from $2.00.
Annual estimates are now below “consensus for $1.95 that once stood as high as $9.77,” Brinkman wrote.
Brinkman advised investors to “approach Tesla shares with a high degree of caution,” as the firm says they “continue to see large -60% downside to our $145 December 2026 price target.”
The analyst said Tesla‘s share price has risen “alongside a material collapse in consensus for all performance metrics through at least the end of the decade.”
According to Brinkman, this disconnect does not inspire confidence in the company’s ability to meet the long-term targets the valuation implies.
Stock Performance
Tesla shares recovered from their 2025 low of $214.25 (reached last April) to hit a new all-time high of $498.83 on December 22.
In the following two months, the stock tumbled by $99 — closing at $399.83 on February 23.
The company’s shares fell to $352.14 on March 30, their lowest level since mid-September — pressured by an escalation of NHTSA’s probe into the company’s FSD software and weaker delivery results.
As of press time, the stock was trading 1.6% lower at $354.90.
Tesla is scheduled to report first-quarter earnings results on April 22, after market close.
