Tesla (TSLA) stock was trading down 1.55% at $386.42 ahead of its first-quarter earnings report due after the closing bell Wednesday.
Wall Street is watching closely, but the real question isn’t just the numbers — it’s what Musk says about robots, robo-taxis, and chips.
Analysts expect Q1 revenue of $22.08 billion, down 9% year over year. Adjusted EPS is forecast at $0.35, and adjusted EBITDA is projected at $3.217 billion, a drop of 14.4% versus Q1 2025.
Tesla delivered 358,023 vehicles globally in Q1, slightly below the 364,645 expected, though up 6.3% year over year. Last year’s Q1 total was lower than usual due to the Model Y changeover, which flatters the comparison.
The Robotaxi program is front and center. Over the weekend, Tesla expanded the service to parts of Dallas and Houston, adding to existing operations in Austin and the San Francisco Bay Area.
Notably, the Dallas and Houston rollout is “unsupervised,” meaning no safety driver is present — a step Tesla had previously only taken on a limited basis in Austin.
Tesla still doesn’t publicly disclose how many vehicles are in each city’s fleet, or how many are operating without a driver. That lack of detail continues to frustrate some analysts.
BofA Securities analyst Alexander Perry reiterated a Buy rating and a $460 price target on Tuesday, citing the Robotaxi expansion. Perry wrote that Tesla is in the “early stages of monetizing its autonomy efforts” and sees a $1 trillion-plus rideshare market opportunity.
Morgan Stanley expects Tesla to surpass 10 billion full self-driving miles soon, a milestone the bank sees as meaningful for training data and future development.
Tesla is projecting capital expenditures above $20 billion for 2026 — up from $8.5 billion last year. That jump is expected to push free cash flow into negative territory.
The spending covers new batteries, Cybercab production, Optimus humanoid robots, and AI computing infrastructure. Tesla is building its “Cortex 2” data center at its Texas Gigafactory and had planned to more than double onsite compute capacity in the first half of 2026.
Musk announced last week that Tesla had completed the chip design process — known as “taping out” — for its AI5 chip. The chip is intended for future EVs, large AI training clusters, and Optimus.
Production is planned at Tesla’s upcoming “Terafab” facility in Austin. However, analysts at Bernstein estimated the full project could require between $5 trillion and $13 trillion in capital spending. Sources told Bloomberg that the fab won’t begin manufacturing silicon until 2029.
On the Optimus front, Tesla had planned to unveil a third-generation humanoid robot in Q1. That didn’t happen, and investors will be looking for an updated timeline.
Tesla’s fourth-quarter deck had outlined plans to expand Robotaxi to nine cities in the first half of 2026, including Phoenix, Miami, Orlando, Tampa, and Las Vegas.
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