Tesla reports second-quarter delivery results on Thursday. They need to be good.
Coming into the report, shares were up 12% for the week, seemingly rising alongside expectations of a positive delivery number. Wall Street expects about 406,000 cars to be sold, but more recent estimates, including those from Barclays and JPMorgan, are in the range of 420,000. What's more, prominent Tesla forecaster Troy Teslike projects 466,000 cars sold.
Any number above 420,000 should be enough to keep investors happy for now. And just meeting the delivery consensus will likely take some of the recent air out of Tesla stock.
Ahead of the report, Tesla stock was up 0.5% in premarket trading at $427.32, while S&P 500 futures were down 0.2% and Dow Jones Industrial Average futures were flat.
Tesla delivered about 384,000 cars in the second quarter of 2025. Investors are looking for growth, which has eluded the EV maker for a while. Annual deliveries peaked in 2023 at about 1.8 million cars, then fell in 2024 and 2025. Tesla is expected to grow EV deliveries in 2026, selling about 1.7 million cars, up from about 1.6 million in 2025.
Reasons for the slowdown include Tesla deciding against introducing an all-new, lower-priced EV, and the loss of the $7,500 federal EV purchase tax credit in September, which made EVs less affordable for American car buyers. Offsetting some of the headwinds in the second quarter was the rise in gasoline costs. Benchmark prices reached $4.60 a gallon in May, up about $1.60 after the war in Iran disrupted global oil supplies.
Tesla's EV business generates most of the company's sales and earnings, but investors have been focused more on AI lately. Tesla launched an AI-trained robo-taxi service in Austin, Texas, about a year ago. Today, it operates in a few cities, but the business is not generating significant sales or earnings. Investors are also keen to see the latest version of Tesla's humanoid robot, Optimus.
AI will continue to move the stock in the coming months. Still, no one will complain about a rebound in Tesla's EV business.
