Tesla Q1 2026 Earnings: Wall Street Analyst Reactions, Price Target Changes & Ratings Roundup
A brief update on some of the Wall Street analyst updates on Tesla following the recent earnings report. I’ll run through the updates and then share some details.
Wall Street analyst updates
DZ Bank upgraded to hold from sell with a $385 price target. It’s a positive of sorts, but it merely aligns the target price with the current price. No big deal
Morgan Stanley reiterated its equalweight rating and a $415 target. I always think an equalweight rating is actually a sell rating because why would you take on stock-specific risk for a company that you think should be “equal” rated? The Morgan Stanley analyst acknowledges the importance of the capital spending plans (upgraded to $25 billion in 2026 from a previous estimate of $20 billion on the January call), but thinks they could be slower than the market expects.
As previously discussed, the Barclays analyst is also focused on capital spending, and he makes a fair point in that the larger spending commitment was made at the same time as the issue of robotaxi scaling and some questions around hardware and Terafab spending remain unanswered. As a reminder, Musk said Hardware 3 “simply does not have the capability to achieve unsupervised FSD,” and he also said the company was still “we’re still working out the details of the Terafab deployment,” on the earnings call.
Putting this together, spending is going up, but expectations for robotaxi revenue and cash flow appear to need to be pushed out. Barclays reiterated an equalweight rating and a $360 price target.
Wells Fargo remains bearish and has an underweight rating, with a $125 price target on the stock. The analyst noted some of the bad news from the report, the update on Hardware 3, the impact of one-time items on first-quarter earnings, the increased capital spending target for 2026, and the slow monetization of its investments. Clearly, this analyst is looking for near-term catalysts.
RBC took a more positive approach in maintaining an outperform rating, but slightly lowered its price target to $475 from $480, noting that gross margins (21.1% on a GAAP basis) looked healthy even when excluding the one-time benefits that concerned some other analysts.
Canaccord reiterated a buy rating and raised its price target to $450 from $420. The Canaccord analyst is definitely taking a long-term view, citing the benefits of Tesla’s investments in securing its supply chain amid an unstable global environment. This is an excellent point, but the rationale for the price target hike appears to come from raising the 2028 earnings target. That’s fine for longer-term, focused investors, but it won’t keep short-term Wall Street analysts and investors happy.
BofA Securities also appears to have a longer-term-focused analyst who reiterated a $460 price target and a buy rating on the stock, noting the potential in Tesla’s autonomy business.
Wall Street analyst roundup
In a nutshell, many of the themes addressed above speak to the ongoing debate over the stock. Near-term catalyst vs. long-term strategic dominance? If you are a believer in autonomy, the robotaxi rollout, and Opt,imus, you emphasize the latter; if you are less inclined to believe, you stress the former.
That said, overall, I think the earnings report weakened the case for the stock, not least as fixing the Hardware 3 issue will add spending, so will Terafab, and the $5 billion hike in capital spending in 2026 can’t be ignored. The robotaxi rollout proceeds, but at a slower pace than most hoped. Still, some good news on robotaxi expansion and safety updates over the next six months could change the narrative around the stock.
Tesla Q1 2026 Earnings: Wall Street Analyst Reactions, Price Target Changes & Ratings Roundup
A brief update on some of the Wall Street analyst updates on Tesla following the recent earnings report. I’ll run through the updates and then share some details.
Wall Street analyst updates
DZ Bank upgraded to hold from sell with a $385 price target. It’s a positive of sorts, but it merely aligns the target price with the current price. No big deal
Morgan Stanley reiterated its equalweight rating and a $415 target. I always think an equalweight rating is actually a sell rating because why would you take on stock-specific risk for a company that you think should be “equal” rated? The Morgan Stanley analyst acknowledges the importance of the capital spending plans (upgraded to $25 billion in 2026 from a previous estimate of $20 billion on the January call), but thinks they could be slower than the market expects.
As previously discussed, the Barclays analyst is also focused on capital spending, and he makes a fair point in that the larger spending commitment was made at the same time as the issue of robotaxi scaling and some questions around hardware and Terafab spending remain unanswered. As a reminder, Musk said Hardware 3 “simply does not have the capability to achieve unsupervised FSD,” and he also said the company was still “we’re still working out the details of the Terafab deployment,” on the earnings call.
Putting this together, spending is going up, but expectations for robotaxi revenue and cash flow appear to need to be pushed out. Barclays reiterated an equalweight rating and a $360 price target.
Wells Fargo remains bearish and has an underweight rating, with a $125 price target on the stock. The analyst noted some of the bad news from the report, the update on Hardware 3, the impact of one-time items on first-quarter earnings, the increased capital spending target for 2026, and the slow monetization of its investments. Clearly, this analyst is looking for near-term catalysts.
RBC took a more positive approach in maintaining an outperform rating, but slightly lowered its price target to $475 from $480, noting that gross margins (21.1% on a GAAP basis) looked healthy even when excluding the one-time benefits that concerned some other analysts.
Canaccord reiterated a buy rating and raised its price target to $450 from $420. The Canaccord analyst is definitely taking a long-term view, citing the benefits of Tesla’s investments in securing its supply chain amid an unstable global environment. This is an excellent point, but the rationale for the price target hike appears to come from raising the 2028 earnings target. That’s fine for longer-term, focused investors, but it won’t keep short-term Wall Street analysts and investors happy.
BofA Securities also appears to have a longer-term-focused analyst who reiterated a $460 price target and a buy rating on the stock, noting the potential in Tesla’s autonomy business.
Wall Street analyst roundup
In a nutshell, many of the themes addressed above speak to the ongoing debate over the stock. Near-term catalyst vs. long-term strategic dominance? If you are a believer in autonomy, the robotaxi rollout, and Opt,imus, you emphasize the latter; if you are less inclined to believe, you stress the former.
That said, overall, I think the earnings report weakened the case for the stock, not least as fixing the Hardware 3 issue will add spending, so will Terafab, and the $5 billion hike in capital spending in 2026 can’t be ignored. The robotaxi rollout proceeds, but at a slower pace than most hoped. Still, some good news on robotaxi expansion and safety updates over the next six months could change the narrative around the stock.