UBS expects Tesla to deliver 470,000 vehicles in the third quarter, down 5% from a year earlier, analyst Joseph Spak said in a new note published this Thursday.
The Swiss bank reiterated a Neutral rating and a $385 price target on the Elon Musk-led company.
UBS’s delivery estimate sits above the Visible Alpha consensus of 454,000 units by 4%, Spak wrote, adding that UBS does not “yet have ‘company collected consensus’ which we expect will be posted within a week.”
The bank’s 470,000-unit delivery estimate implies a 5.5% decline year over year before rounding. Measured against the second quarter’s delivery total, the same figure would mark a 2.1% sequential drop, compared with the 1% decline cited by UBS.
Forecast Against Prior Quarters
Tesla delivered 497,099 vehicles in the third quarter of 2025.
That total remains a company record, set when US buyers rushed to purchase ahead of the September 30, 2025 expiry of the $7,500 federal EV tax credit.
Tesla delivered 480,126 vehicles in the second quarter, according to the company. Deliveries rose 25.0% year-over-year from 384,122 units.
They also beat Tesla’s company-compiled consensus of 406,024 by about 74,000 vehicles.
Production reached 451,758 vehicles in the second quarter.
Tesla drew down inventory by 28,368 units, after building it by 50,363 units in the first quarter, when it produced 408,386 vehicles and delivered 358,023.
If UBS’s estimate holds, Tesla’s deliveries for the first nine months of 2026 would reach 1,308,149 units.
Despite the Q3 2025 record, the total year-to-date in 2026 would be 7.4% above the 1,217,902 vehicles delivered in the same period of 2025.
Buyside Expectations
Spak said investors are paying limited attention to vehicle volumes, even as their expectations have climbed.
“While we don’t believe the buyside is overly focused on auto units, we believe buyside expectations have also come up in recent weeks and would peg the range of expectations at 460-480k,” he wrote.
UBS’s forecast is well above Goldman Sachs’ estimate.
Last week, Goldman Sachs analyst Mark Delaney cut his third-quarter forecast to 435,000 from 490,000, citing weaker-than-expected sales data in China, the US and Europe.
Goldman cited a Visible Alpha consensus of 456,000 at the time. UBS now puts the same consensus at 454,000.
Spak’s estimate is 35,000 units, or 8.0%, above Goldman’s.
Regional data has been mixed.
Tesla sold an estimated 40,816 vehicles in the US in August, a 26% year-over-year decline, according to Motor Intelligence.
In China, Tesla’s retail sales fell 12.4% year-over-year in August to 50,047 vehicles, bringing domestic sales for the first eight months of 2026 to 316,251 units, according to CPCA data.
Tesla launched the Model Y Performance in China on September 5.
In Europe, Tesla added special shifts at Giga Berlin in September to lift weekly Model Y output to 7,500 units by mid-October.
Energy Storage
UBS also expects strong growth in Tesla’s energy business.
“We also forecast storage deployment at 16.9 GWh (+35% y/y, +25% q/q) but caveat as always that energy storage is lumpy and checks are difficult,” Spak wrote.
Tesla deployed 13.5 GWh of energy storage in the second quarter, according to its SEC filing, up from 8.8 GWh in the first quarter.
Deployments reached 12.5 GWh in the third quarter of 2025. Tesla’s quarterly record stands at 14.2 GWh, set in the fourth quarter of 2025.
UBS’s 16.9 GWh estimate would exceed that figure by 2.7 GWh.
Tesla’s storage products have drawn recent attention in California.
Tesla and Sunrun home batteries sent a record 580 MW to the state’s grid earlier this month.
Stock Performance
As of press time, Tesla was trading at $377.50 on Thursday’s morning session, nearly flat from Wednesday’s closing price of $380.12.
Spak’s target sits $25 above Goldman’s $360 target, which Delaney reiterated in his September 16 note. Shares have recovered over the past month.
Tesla rose as high as $386.70 on Wednesday, its highest level since July, and gained 9.9% over the four weeks to Wednesday’s close. It closed Thursday at $377.94, hours before the Semi-dedicated event.
Since closing at $356.58 on September 15, the day before Goldman’s note, Tesla stock has gained 5.9%.
Shares have traded between $297.38 and $498.83 — its all-time intraday high, set on December 22, 2025 — over the past 52 weeks.
Earlier this week, Fitch gave Tesla its first BBB rating, one notch below SpaceX.
