Key Takeaways
- Tesla stock is up 15.6% in the past week as Musk handed the Cybertruck’s line to the Cybercab and robotaxis reached San Antonio.
- Bloomberg reports Tesla and SpaceX could announce a merger as soon as December.
- The car business is still weak: China retail sales fell 66% in October, and the third-quarter operating margin was 2.6%.
- With the stock priced far above its usual forward multiple, the merger’s terms are worth waiting for.
Tesla (TSLA) stock is up 15.6% in the past week, and almost all the news behind it was about autonomy.
The gain makes back almost all of the drop after the midterms, when the Democratic sweep raised doubts about a merger with SpaceX (SPCX). SpaceX rose 13.2% over the same stretch. The Nasdaq 100 gained 6.2%, so the market helped, but Tesla more than doubled it.
Cybercab gets the Cybertruck’s line
Elon Musk posted on X at 1:30 a.m. ET on Nov. 6 that Cybertruck production at Giga Texas would wind down around mid-2027 “to make room for increased Cybercab production.” On Nov. 11, he pushed that to the end of summer 2027 to work through the order backlog, admitting it’s “not the smartest move from a profit-maximizing standpoint.”
In volume terms, the truck is easy to give up: the “other models” line that includes it was under 2% of third-quarter deliveries.
Tesla’s robotaxis also reached San Antonio on Nov. 9, where Alphabet’s Waymo launched rides in February. And Finland approved Tesla’s assisted driving system on Nov. 10, ahead of an EU-wide decision.
The cars still have to pay for it
Analysts expect normalized EPS to roughly double from 2025 to 2028:
Analysts shouldn’t need to change those estimates much after this week. On the third-quarter call, Musk said robotaxis should start to show up noticeably in results only around the second quarter of 2027.
Until then, the cars pay for the build, and they’re struggling. Tesla’s retail sales in China fell 66% in October to their lowest since July 2022, according to the China Passenger Car Association. China made up 22.1% of Tesla’s 2025 revenue. The third-quarter operating margin was just 2.6%, down from 5.8% a year earlier.
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Wait for SpaceX’s terms
On the afternoon of Nov. 12, Bloomberg reported that Tesla and SpaceX are making progress in merger talks and could announce a deal as soon as December, though the timing could slip into early 2027. A deal would need approval from a majority of all Tesla’s outstanding shares, not just the votes cast, and an all-stock deal would swap those shares for SpaceX’s.
The stock isn’t cheap going in, at about 183x forward earnings against a five-year average of 108x:
After the run, it also sits close to the Street’s $412 average price target.
Giving the Cybercab more floor space is smart capital allocation. But with China sales sliding and margins this thin, the merger terms are worth seeing before buying. November’s China sales data comes out in early December, about when a deal could come.
So what is Tesla stock actually worth?
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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 of the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading, and happy investing!
