Tesla shares fell to a three-month low of $350.80 in pre-market trading on Thursday, as analysts cut earnings estimates following second-quarter results that beat on revenue and missed on profit.
The level marks a decline of 6.1% from Wednesday’s close of $374 and takes the stock 22.4% below the $453 reached in mid-May, its high for 2026.
Shares last traded around $351 in mid-April, weeks before that peak. The stock has now given back the entire nine-week advance.
Chief executive Elon Musk called the quarter “outstanding” on the earnings call. Both firms publishing on Thursday disagreed on the outlook, while splitting on the stock.
Oppenheimer stays cautious
Colin Rusch reiterated a Perform rating, describing the results as uninspiring.
Vehicle and stationary storage margins “normalized lower on tariff impact and pricing dynamics,” the analyst wrote, adding that the company pointed to continued elevated research spending and therefore “lower operating margins going forward.”
Rusch was unimpressed by the growth narrative that usually carries the stock. Commentary on Optimus and robotaxi “was muted given the magnitude of technology challenges even as EV sales appear robust,” he wrote.
Management reiterated capital expenditure of about $25 billion or more for 2026, including an incremental 150 MW of compute capacity, and indicated a willingness to borrow up to $30 billion to support the investment if required.
Tesla remains “in the early stages of an expensive multi-year transition to scaled Physical AI operations,” Rusch wrote, cutting earnings estimates and citing execution risk and capital needs.
BofA keeps its Buy but cuts numbers
Alexander Perry reiterated a Buy rating and a $460 price target, while reducing his 2026 earnings forecast to $1.76 a share from $2.13, a cut of 17.4%.
Second-quarter earnings of $0.33 a share came in 40.0% below the $0.55 the street expected.
Automotive gross margin was the main cause. The segment reported 16.9% against a consensus of 19.4%, a shortfall of 2.5 percentage points that Perry attributed to lower regulatory credits and lower average selling prices.
Margins would have been roughly flat sequentially excluding a warranty and tariff benefit of about $230 million booked in the first quarter, Tesla told the firm.
Costs also ran high on research spending, including pre-production ramp costs for the Semi, Optimus and Cybercab.
Perry lowered his estimates on weaker automotive and energy gross margin alongside that elevated spending.
Two new disclosures on full self-driving
The BofA note flags a metric the company had not previously published.
Tesla disclosed a 55.0% attach rate on North American deliveries, meaning more than half of new customers in the region take the driver-assistance software.
Total fleet penetration now exceeds 15.0%, against active subscriptions of 1.48 million reported for the quarter.
Energy generation and storage came in ahead of expectations on record deployments in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Musk against the tape
The chief executive opened the call in a different register.
“Overall, this quarter’s performance was outstanding,” Musk said, adding that the company “achieved our best-ever Q2 delivery results.”
He claimed that the Model Y is the world’s best-selling vehicle, setting records across global markets.
Deliveries of 480,126 vehicles were a second-quarter record, up 25.0% year on year, and revenue of $28.24 billion beat the company-compiled consensus of $27.58 billion.
Operating income told the other story, falling 57.0% to $398 million for a margin of 1.4% against the 5.4% analysts had modelled.
The Optimus warning
Musk spent much of his prepared remarks lowering expectations on the humanoid robot, which he has said will account for most of the company’s eventual value.
Optimus has “the potential to become the largest-volume product in human history,” he said, before adding that “its development complexity is immense.”
No company has yet built a general-purpose humanoid able to carry out tasks from voice commands or video demonstrations without manual programming, Musk said.
The production ramp will be “far more challenging than for any previous” Tesla product, he added, because “every component in the robot is newly developed.”
Conventional vehicles draw on mature supply chains for body panels, mirrors and glass. Optimus “has no such existing ecosystem,” Musk said, leaving the company to build one or make everything itself.
Output will follow a manufacturing S-curve in which “the initial phase will be exceptionally flat and prolonged.”
The former Model S and Model X lines at Fremont have been converted for the robot.
Musk also drew a line under rival demonstrations, saying most robot videos online rely on pre-programmed sequences or remote control.
