Tesla's Market Cap Just Slipped Below $1.5 Trillion. Here's What the Bears Get Right -- and Wrong.
The narrative around the stock, and in particular its robotaxi rollout, could change significantly now that expectations have been reset.
Overview
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) stock isn't having a great 2026 so far. It's down almost 24% this year as of the time of writing, compared to the S&P 500, which is up almost 13.8%. The underperformance is driven by a realignment of expectations throughout the year: Robotaxi revenue expectations were pushed out, capital expenditure expectations were pushed up, and near-term margin expectations were pushed down. I would invite readers to put forward any stocks that have risen given these sorts of circumstances. The bears got it right, but here's where some of them may be wrong.
Expectations for earnings from robotaxi have been pushed out due to the "delayed" rollout, at the same time as management has unveiled plans to ramp capital spending to above $25 billion in 2026 and will "grow for the next two or three years" to fund Optimus production, robotaxi fleet, investments in Terafab, solar manufacturing, AI compute, and "all the other expansions we'll do for other manufacturing for automotive," according to CFO Vaibhav Taneja on the last earnings call.
Details
As for the margin compression in the second quarter, it largely stems from an unfavorable sales mix and rising costs, as discussed in more detail previously. Putting all of this together, if you were modeling X amount of earnings and cash flow for, say, 2027 and 2028, and the start of the year, then you would have to lower that figure to X minus Y in light of the changes this year.
Source
Originally published at www.fool.com.