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Recap: Tesla first-quarter results; Model X on its way

Tesla first quarter earnings beat the estimates of stock analysts, who expected a loss of 50 cents a share. The actual loss was only 36 cents a share.

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Tesla first-quarter results topped analysts expectations sending shares into positive territory during after-hours trading. The company announced a first-quarter loss of $45 million on revenue of $1.1 billion, which amounts to 36 cents a share on an adjusted basis. That compares to a loss of $50 million, or 40 cents a share, in the first quarter of 2014. Analysts had told investors to expect a loss of 50 cents a share.

On an unadjusted basis, the loss was $1.22 per share. Tesla said the loss includes $22 million, or 17 cents a share, in unrealized losses from foreign currency holdings due to the strong dollar.

The company is experiencing “growing” demand for its Model S electric sedan, according to a report in USA Today. Tesla delivered 10,045 cars during the first quarter and predicted it would produce another 12,500 cars in the second quarter.

The company assured analysts on Wednesday that it was on pace to deliver the expected 55,000 units this year. That number includes sales of both the Model S sedan and the upcoming Model X crossover which is said to begin deliveries starting in the third quarter.

Tesla shares closed at $230.43, down $2.52 or 1.08%, before the earnings report but rose 2.7% in after-hours trading to $236.70. In an exclusive interview with Teslarati, business strategist and Tesla owner Daniel Sparks (@DanielSparks) told us:

“Overall, the quarter was great. The key takeaway was Tesla’s ability to simultaneously maintain so many future growth plans, e.g. maintaining guidance for 55,000 vehicle deliveries in 2015 (up 74% from 2014 deliveries), planning to begin battery cell and pack production in the Gigafactory (which is currently under construction) by next year, expecting to let customers configure Model X by July, and planning to show off the Model 3 (for the first time) in March, 2016.

As shortsighted market watchers focus on near-term financial figures, long-term buy-and-hold Tesla investors know the company is a forward-looking growth story. And when viewed at the 10,000-foot level, Tesla is grade A.”

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Perhaps the best news for stockholders was the announcement on April 30 that Tesla will begin selling its Powerwall batteries for residential use, together with its larger PowerPack batteries for commercial and grid scale energy storage, later this year.

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Tesla’s Powerwall Home Battery will allow households to to go off the grid by charging via photovoltaic solar panels from SolarCity. Source: SolarCity

Elon Musk told analysts during the conference call that demand for the stationary batteries has been so “crazy” that the company is considering expanding its Gigafactory outside Reno to meet the demand. He said the company already has 38,000 reservations for the home wall unit and 2,500 from large industrial companies or utilities.

“The sheer volume of demand here is staggering,” said Musk. In fact, the Gigafactory could be kept completely busy just building stationary use batteries, the demand is so great.

ALSO SEE >>> Cost benefit analysis of owning the Tesla Powerwall.

"I write about technology and the coming zero emissions revolution."

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SpaceX’s biggest test yet arrives this week and it’s not a rocket launch

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SpaceX will report second quarter results after the market closes on Tuesday, August 4, marking the first time the company has opened its books to the public since its record IPO in June. Management will host a live audio only webcast at 4:30 p.m. ET, streamed on X, with no dial in option.

The debut carries more weight than a typical first quarter as a public company. Two trading days after the release, on August 6, the first tranche of SpaceX’s lockup expires, freeing roughly 911.5 million insider and employee shares, worth well over $100 billion at current prices and the largest such release in Wall Street history. A second, larger tranche tied to the stock trading 30 percent above its $135 IPO price never triggered, since shares have spent most of July trading below that price.

Wall Street’s models point to revenue near $6.9 billion for the quarter, up sharply from the $4.69 billion SpaceX reported in the first quarter, with a narrower per share loss than the $1.27 posted three months earlier, according to estimates compiled by Motley Fool. Those numbers will be the first look at how SpaceX’s three segments, Starlink, launch and AI, are performing independently.

SpaceX scores another massive Pentagon deal to support military satellites

Investors heading into the call have a specific list of questions. How many net new Starlink subscribers did SpaceX add after ending March with 10.3 million, and is average revenue per user holding up as the service expands into lower income markets. How much of the AI segment’s revenue reflects contract signings with Anthropic, Google and Reflection AI this year, deals that combined could annualize to nearly $28 billion if fully ramped. Whether capital expenditures, which nearly doubled in the AI segment alone between 2024 and 2025, are still accelerating or starting to plateau. And whether management offers any forward guidance at all, something SpaceX has never done publicly.

The report will also land days after Elon Musk publicly denied a Wall Street Journal report describing internal planning to separate Tesla’s China business ahead of a potential Tesla-SpaceX merger. Whether Musk or SpaceX executives address that speculation on the call, even indirectly, maybe something investors will be listening for on Tuesday.

As Teslarati reported after Musk’s own warning to short sellers last week, the CEO has made clear he expects skeptics to be proven wrong over time. Tuesday will be the first chance for the numbers themselves to make that case.

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Tesla AI boss reveals how big Optimus is going to get

Tesla’s Optimus chief corrected himself on X, confirming a staggering 10 million robot production target.

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Tesla Optimus Gen 3 [Credit: Tesla]

Tesla’s Optimus program has a new number attached to it, after Ashok Elluswamy, the executive who has run the humanoid robot program since June 2025, posted a three word correction on X Thursday, “Correction, 10 million robots.”

The line clarifies the long term annual capacity Tesla is building toward its planned second Optimus production line at Gigafactory Texas, a figure Musk has cited repeatedly since last year’s shareholder meeting.

The scale is worth noting, because ten million robots a year would mean Tesla building more units annually than most countries sell in new cars. Tesla has framed this as a second line, not the first. The buildout is happening in two phases: a roughly one million unit per year line inside Tesla’s Fremont factory, installed on the floor space vacated when Model S and Model X production ended earlier this year, and a much larger dedicated facility under construction at Giga Texas that broke ground on its first steel structure in May. That Texas facility is the one Elluswamy’s correction refers to, and is expected to reach volume production sometime in 2027.

Tesla Optimus project fires up as Musk sees production line progress

Elluswamy took over Optimus from Milan Kovac last summer and has spent the months since talking up the program’s trajectory. Elon Musk has also floated the ten million figure at Tesla’s 2025 shareholder meeting.

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Ending Model S and Model X production to make room for the first Optimus line was one of the more consequential manufacturing decisions in the company’s recent history, retiring two flagship vehicles in favor of a robot that has yet to enter mass production. Musk has previously estimated per unit production costs at $20,000 to $25,000 once Tesla reaches a million units a year, though he hasn’t said what that cost looks like at ten times the volume.

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SpaceX scores another massive Pentagon deal to support military satellites

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SpaceX just picked up another $1.6 billion from the Pentagon, with the U.S. Space Force awarding two task orders worth $1.6 billion to fly 18 Falcon 9 missions from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California through the end of 2027. The launches will carry satellites for the Space Based Sensing and Targeting portfolio, a set of programs meant to help the military detect and track airborne threats and relay that information across forces in near real time.

The award falls under National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 1, the Space Force’s faster, commercial style procurement track for missions that do not require the military’s most demanding certification process. It is also the largest single order publicly disclosed under that program so far, and the first task order issued since the Space Force nearly tripled Lane 1’s contract ceiling from $5.6 billion to $17 billion on July 17.

SpaceX to become America’s Military data backbone for missiles, drones, and warfighters

Eric Zarybnisky, the Space Force’s acting portfolio acquisition executive for space access, said the entire process, from identifying the requirement to signing the contract, took about two months, including a month set aside for companies to prepare proposals.

SpaceX is not just launching these satellites. It already holds the contracts to build two of the programs within the same portfolio, $4.16 billion for the Space Based Airborne Moving Target Indicator system and $2.29 billion for the Space Data Network Backbone, which Teslarati covered in May. That means SpaceX is now responsible for both building key pieces of the military’s next generation sensing network and getting them into orbit.

With this latest award, SpaceX’s Pentagon contract total for 2026 alone tops $8 billion, adding to a defense portfolio that already includes the Golden Dome missile defense software group SpaceX joined in April and a string of GPS launches it inherited after ULA’s Vulcan rocket ran into a booster anomaly, which we detailed in March.

Lane 1’s vendor pool technically includes seven companies: SpaceX, ULA, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, Stoke Space, Impulse Space, and Relativity Space. In practice, SpaceX remains the only provider with the combination of launch cadence, flight proven Falcon 9 hardware, and West Coast infrastructure to support a campaign requiring roughly one Vandenberg launch a month for the next year and a half.

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Some lawmakers have flagged the growing concentration of national security launches with one company as a risk worth watching. For now, the Space Force keeps backing SpaceX, with it being the company that shows up ready to launch.

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