Here’s what Wall Street expects, according to estimates from analysts polled by LSEG:
- Earnings per share: 51 cents expected
- Revenue: $25.71 billion expected
Tesla’s earnings report lands in the midst of a steep decline in its stock price, which is down about 10% this month and 16% for the year. That slide has coincided with a drop in SpaceX, Elon Musk’s other trillion-dollar company, which held a record market debut in June and has lost almost 40% of its value since its peak close.
For Tesla, the dip has come despite signs of a rebound in its core auto business. In early July, the company reported vehicle deliveries that topped 480,000, exceeding exceeding analysts’ expectations.
Tesla is trying to recover from consecutive years of declining deliveries, largely due to competition from Chinese automakers, including BYD, Nio and Xiaomi, that are offering affordable but high-tech EVs in markets beyond the U.S. Some car buyers have boycotted Tesla in response to Musk’s incendiary political rhetoric and work with the Trump administration.
Soaring gas prices resulting from the U.S. war in Iran boosted Tesla sales in the first half of the year, with European car buyers purchasing more EVs.
In the second-quarter, Tesla started selling lower-cost versions of its Model 3 and Model Y vehicles, and made its premium driver assistance system, marketed as Full Self-Driving (Supervised) in the U.S., available in some European markets.
But Musk has shifted the focus of the company away from vehicle sales and toward its driverless Robotaxi service, ramping production of the company’s driverless Cybercab, and remaking older factory lines in Fremont, California, to start manufacturing Optimus humanoid robots. He’s promised shareholders and fans an AI-powered robot that will be able to step in as a babysitter, factory worker or world-class surgeon.
“I think Optimus will be our biggest product, not just Tesla’s biggest product ever, but probably the biggest product ever,” Musk said on the company’s last earnings call in April.
Paul Miller, an analyst at Forrester, told CNBC in an email that Tesla leadership has made “plenty of big claims about autonomous mobility and physical AI over the years,” but missed on some “bolder bets.”
Musk told investors in 2019 that there would be 1 million Tesla robotaxis on the road by 2020. Last year, he said the company’s autonomous ride-hailing services would cover “probably half the population of the U.S.” by the end of 2025. And at the World Economic Forum in Davos earlier this year, Musk said Tesla Robotaxis would be “very, very widespread” domestically by the end of this year, a target that remains far off.
In robotaxis, Tesla is way behind Alphabet’s Waymo in the U.S. and Baidu’s Apollo Go in China. And in the humanoid robot market, where Tesla is still developing its product, the company faces competition from companies including China’s Unitree, Boston Dynamics, Agility Robotics, Apptronik and London-based startup Humanoid.
On Wednesday’s conference call, investors will be looking for updates on robotics and driverless technology, and how Musk expects Tesla and SpaceX to work together, including on Terafab, a massive chip factory the companies plan to jointly build and run with Intel in Texas.
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