Cantor Fitzgerald Stands By Overweight on Tesla, $485 Price Target

Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Andres Sheppard reiterated an Overweight rating and $485 price target on Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA).

“Tesla’s 3Q26 Deliveries Above Expectations.

On 10/2, TSLA (OW) pre-announced that in 3Q26, it delivered 486,532 vehicles, above our aggregated sell-side consensus of 461,974 (though below 497,099 in 3Q25).

Of the total vehicles delivered, 478,237 were Model 3/Y and 8,295 comprised of the other models.

Separately, Tesla also produced 464,391 vehicles in 3Q26, below Visible Alpha consensus of 486,761 (but above 447,450 vehicles in 3Q25).

Recall that in FY25, TSLA delivered/produced 1,636,129/1,654,667 vehicles, respectively.

Energy Storage Below. Tesla announced that it had deployed 13.7 GWh of energy storage products in 3Q26, below our estimate/aggregated sell-side consensus of 15.0/15.9 GWh (but above 12.5 GWh in 3Q25).

What’s Next? TSLA will report 3Q26 earnings on 10/21 after the market close and host its earnings call at 5:30 PM ET.

Announces New Credit Agreements.

This week, TSLA announced three new credit agreements, including: (1) a $20B senior unsecured three-year delayed draw term loan facility, (2) an $8B senior unsecured five-year revolving facility, and (3) a $2B senior unsecured 364-day revolving credit facility.

The company indicated that it does not plan to draw on these facilities this year and also terminated its existing $5B revolver.

Roadster Unveil Now Expected on 10/15. Tesla recently dropped a new teaser for its upcoming Roadster high-performance EV, and the company announced that it is now planning to unveil the Roadster on October 15.

Launches Cybercab in Texas. Tesla recently began commercial operations of its Cybercab in Austin, TX. As of 9/4, TSLA had 45 Cybercabs registered in Texas (according to CNBC).

Management previously said that once production ramps, it expects Cybercab to ultimately be the largest volume vehicle in its lineup.

Following the launch, the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced plans to audit ~1,000 Cybercabs to ensure compliance with federal safety standards.

Humanoids: Optimus. TSLA previously disclosed that construction on its first-generation humanoid Optimus has begun at Fremont (following decommissioning of the Model S & X lines).

Recall, Optimus’s first-generation manufacturing line is being designed with a capacity of 1M robots per year (according to management), and TSLA has also begun building construction at Gigafactory Texas for the second-generation Optimus line, which management is targeting for a (long-term) annual production capacity of 10M robots.

Management expects the autonomous humanoid robot to ultimately become the company’s largest product, though recently The Information and the Verge reported that while Tesla produced several hundred Optimus units a week in August, production is supposedly well below expected levels.

We look for an update on the call.

An Update on Semi. On its Q2 earnings call, Tesla disclosed that production for its Semi has started, and volume production in Nevada remains on track for this year.

Musk previously framed the U.S. truck driver shortage as a demand-side tailwind for autonomous trucking, a market Tesla intends to compete in.

Still, the company affirmed that the Semi will remain a very small percentage of Tesla’s total fleet even by year-end, and that autonomous trucking is less of a priority to high-volume autonomy ramp up of robotaxi/cybercab.

We believe the company is now producing up to ~1,000 Semi Trucks per week.

Latest on Full Self-Driving (FSD). In 2Q26, TSLA added ~200K FSD customers (vs. ~180K in 1Q26), increasing total active FSD subscribers to 1.48M.

Cumulative deliveries, (which include new Tesla vehicle deliveries and unsupervised Robotaxis in-service), were 9.7M in 2Q26 (vs. 9.2M in 1Q26).

Valuation. Our OW rating and our 12-month $485 PT are unchanged, pending a full model update. We arrive at our valuation via a 10-year bottom-up DCF approach.

Key Risks Include: 1) Delays in Cybercab and Optimus Timeline, 2) Robotaxi Regulatory approval hurdles, 3) Chinese OEM competition, and 4) Slowdown in EV demand.”

This research note is reproduced verbatim from the issuing firm. Price Target never edits, paraphrases or alters analysts’ words — we only republish them in one place.