Key Stats for Tesla Stock
- Current Price: $392.50
- Street Target (Mean): ~$416
- TIKR Target Price (Mid): ~$6,900
- Potential Total Return (Mid): ~1,658%
- Annualized IRR (Mid): ~39% / year
- Max Drawdown: -29.93% (April 8, 2026)
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What Happened?
Tesla (TSLA) stock has rarely been this unloved and this expensive at the same time. Shares are down 20% year to date at $392.50, after hitting a 29.93% drawdown on April 8, yet the stock still trades at roughly 194 times forward earnings.
The question heading into Q1 2026 earnings on April 22 is one the market has been arguing about for years: is this a car company with an AI option, or an AI company that still happens to sell cars?
The pressure started in early April, when Tesla reported Q1 2026 deliveries of 358,023 vehicles, missing analyst expectations of around 370,000.
The stock dropped more than 5% that day, its worst single-day loss of 2026. Tesla also produced 408,386 vehicles in the quarter, leaving roughly 50,000 more cars in inventory than it delivered, an overhang that could weigh on Q2 margins.
The narrative shifted fast. On April 15, Musk announced that Tesla’s next-generation AI5 autonomous driving chip had reached a key engineering milestone, sending shares up nearly 8%.
That same week, Tesla expanded its unsupervised robotaxi service into Dallas and Houston, making it the first major U.S. operator to run a commercial driverless fleet across multiple cities simultaneously.
On the Q4 2025 earnings call, CFO Vaibhav Taneja outlined the investment scope. “At the moment, we are expecting that CapEx would be in excess of $20 billion,” covering six new factories, including Cybercab, Semi, and Optimus.
He confirmed the figure excludes Terafab, the planned domestic AI chip facility co-developed with SpaceX, which Barclays estimates could cost in the mid-single-digit trillions if fully built out.
Musk was direct: “If we don’t do the Tesla TerraFab, we’re going to be limited by supplier output of chips.”
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Is Tesla Undervalued Today?
The stock’s valuation tells you immediately that the market isn’t pricing the car business; it’s pricing a bet on everything else.
At roughly 95.7x forward EV/EBITDA per TIKR, Tesla trades at more than 13 times the multiple of GM (around 7.4x) and BYD (around 7.2x).
That premium only makes sense if the robotaxi network, Optimus robot, and energy storage business grow large enough to earn a technology multiple rather than an automotive one.
There is real progress on that front. Tesla’s energy storage segment, which sells Megapack battery systems to utilities and data centers, grew from $10.1 billion in 2024 to $12.8 billion in 2025, per Tesla’s Q4 2025 earnings report.
That business carries higher margins than car sales and is growing regardless of what happens with EV demand. The robotaxi fleet, now operating without safety drivers in Austin, Dallas, and Houston, is the first real commercial evidence of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) software reaching deployable quality outside a supervised setting.
The core auto business, however, is moving in the other direction. Automotive revenue fell from $82.4 billion in 2023 to $69.5 billion in 2025, per Tesla’s earnings report. Operating income dropped 38% year over year to $4.4 billion as R&D and infrastructure spending surged.
The TIKR consensus model shows free cash flow turning to around negative $6.2 billion in 2026 (a forward estimate, not a reported figure), as over $20 billion in planned capital expenditures absorbs the cash Tesla generates from car sales. Tesla is funding tomorrow’s businesses with the earnings of a present one that is contracting.
Taneja acknowledged the shift on the Q4 call: “Transportation, as we know, is changing. I think we cannot keep applying the same framework from a car sales model to the future.”
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TIKR Advanced Model Analysis
- Current Price: $392.50
- TIKR Target Price (Mid): ~$6,900
- Potential Total Return (Mid): ~1,658%
- Annualized IRR (Mid): ~39% / year
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The TIKR mid-case model assumes around 22% revenue CAGR through 12/31/34. The two primary drivers are the Cybercab robotaxi network scaling across U.S. cities and the energy storage segment compounding on its 2025 base. Net income margins are expected to expand toward around 25% as the revenue mix shifts from hardware toward higher-margin software and autonomy services.
The high case reaches around $9,900 per share at around 45% annualized IRR, pricing in faster Cybercab adoption and Optimus entering meaningful production. The low case lands around $4,700 per share at around 33% annualized IRR, reflecting a slower-but-intact transition timeline. All three scenarios are based on the TIKR mid-case model assumptions as of April 21, 2026.
The central risk across all scenarios is execution timing. The gap between $392.50 and the earnings power of Tesla’s current car business is wide enough that any prolonged delay in robotaxi or Optimus revenue could force a painful multiple compression. With capex expected to exceed $20 billion in 2026 and near-term free cash flow under pressure, Tesla is running on conviction more than current cash generation.
Conclusion
Watch automotive gross margin excluding regulatory credits on the April 22 call. A print above 17% signals the core business is stabilizing. A print below 15% validates the bear case that the legacy segment is deteriorating faster than new businesses can offset. Tesla is either the most important physical AI company on the planet, priced correctly for what it is about to become, or it is an automaker carrying a software multiple on a thesis that keeps moving its own goalposts. Tonight’s call is the next data point in that argument.
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Should You Invest in Tesla?
The only way to really know is to look at the numbers yourself. TIKR gives you free access to the same institutional-quality financial data that professional analysts use to answer exactly that question.
Pull up Tesla, and you’ll see years of historical financials, what Wall Street analysts expect for revenue and earnings in the quarters ahead, how valuation multiples have moved over time, and whether price targets are trending up or down.
You can build a free watchlist to track Tesla alongside every other stock on your radar. No credit card required. Just the data you need to decide for yourself.
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Disclaimer:
Please note that the articles on TIKR are not intended to serve as investment or financial advice from TIKR or our content team, nor are they recommendations to buy or sell any stocks. We create our content based on TIKR Terminal’s investment data and analysts’ estimates. Our analysis might not include recent company news or important updates. TIKR has no position in any stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading, and happy investing!
