Tesla is heading into a pivotal third-quarter delivery report with its core automotive business shrinking, its stock lagging the broader market, and Wall Street increasingly reluctant to issue bearish calls.
Shares are down 21% in 2026, while the S&P 500 has gained 12%. Tesla also trades almost 30% below its December record high. According to Bloomberg data, only 13.1% of 61 analyst recommendations now carry a sell-equivalent rating, the smallest bearish share since April 2023. That decline was partly technical: longtime Tesla skeptic Colin Langan left Wells Fargo, prompting the bank to suspend research coverage and removing one bearish rating without an upgrade. Analysts are also assigning more hold ratings, the highest share in more than two years.
Friday’s delivery report is the immediate catalyst. Wall Street expects around 460,000 vehicles, while Tesla’s company-compiled consensus from more than two dozen brokers points to about 451,000. That would represent a 9% drop from roughly 497,000 deliveries in the same quarter last year. Last year’s figure was inflated by the now-expired $7,500 federal EV purchase credit, which ended in September 2025. Fund manager Gary Black of One Global ETF estimates 470,000 deliveries, describing China as soft, the U.S. as solid, and Europe as okay.
European registration data released in September showed a sharp recovery: Portugal rose 128.3% year over year, France 61.9%, Sweden 38.4%, and Spain 24.8%. Norway and Denmark posted smaller gains of 2.2% and 2.9%. Between January and August, Tesla registrations across the EU, Britain and EFTA rose 43.3%, outpacing the wider battery-electric vehicle market’s 38.8% increase.
Tesla is also building a war chest for its AI pivot. The company secured $30 billion in new credit facilities on September 29, split into a $20 billion three-year term loan handled by Citigroup, an $8 billion five-year revolver, and a $2 billion 364-day revolver with Wells Fargo. Tesla plans about $25 billion in capital spending in 2026, up from roughly $8.5 billion in 2025, as it shifts focus toward robotaxis, autonomous driving, robotics and AI hardware. The Austin robo-taxi service launched in June 2025 but has scaled slower than hoped, and Tesla ended Model S and X production to free Fremont plant space for its Optimus humanoid robot.
StoneX reiterated a Buy rating with a $475 price target, while Cantor Fitzgerald kept an Overweight rating and $485 target. In Europe, Croatia approved Tesla’s supervised Full Self-Driving system, joining the Netherlands, Belgium and Slovenia, although the European Transport Safety Council has asked the EU to reject two speed-related FSD features.
