Is Tesla (TSLA) Stock a Buy Before Earnings Wednesday?

TLDR

• Tesla reports Q1 2026 earnings on April 22 after market close
• Q1 deliveries came in at 358,023 vehicles, missing estimates of ~370,000
• Wall Street expects EPS of $0.37 on revenue of $22.71B; cautious models forecast a -20.6% earnings surprise
• 2026 capex guidance exceeds $20 billion, with Terafab costs potentially in the trillions and excluded from that figure
• Tesla trades at a P/E of ~370x, a valuation that hinges entirely on its autonomous and AI ambitions playing out

Tesla is set to report its first-quarter 2026 results on April 22, after the US market close. The print arrives at a complicated moment — the stock has rallied, but the fundamentals underneath are doing something different.

Tesla, Inc., TSLA

Q1 deliveries came in at 358,023 vehicles, down 14% sequentially and below the Wall Street consensus of around 370,000. Year-over-year, that’s a 7% drop from the 386,810 delivered in Q1 2025.

The delivery miss isn’t just a number. Tesla produced 408,386 vehicles in the quarter, leaving a gap of roughly 50,000 units that went into inventory. That kind of spread raises a straightforward question about demand.

Street consensus is looking for EPS of $0.37 on revenue of $22.71 billion. Refinitiv’s Smart Estimate is more cautious — $0.30 EPS on $21.52 billion in revenue — with a predicted earnings surprise of -20.6%.

Margins and Capex in Focus

Gross margin is expected to land somewhere between 17% and 18%. If it prints below 17%, the profitability story gets harder to hold together, especially with ongoing price competition in China and raw material cost pressures still in play.

Capital expenditure is the other number investors will watch closely. Tesla’s 2026 capex guidance already exceeds $20 billion, up from roughly $8.5 billion in 2025. That covers new factories and AI compute infrastructure.

But there’s a bigger number lurking. Terafab — Tesla’s planned one-terawatt AI compute facility — was excluded from that $20 billion figure. Reuters and Bloomberg have reported that Musk’s team has already contacted multiple suppliers, suggesting the project is moving past the concept stage. If fully built out, Terafab could cost in the mid single-digit trillions.

That’s a lot of runway to fund from a car business under margin pressure.

The Autonomy Question

The earnings call will likely live or die on autonomy timelines. Investors want updated guidance on the commercial Robotaxi rollout, FSD take-rate data, and Optimus unit economics.

Musk confirmed last week that Tesla taped out its next-generation AI5 self-driving chip. He also stated the existing AI4 chip is capable enough for Full Self-Driving software to outperform human safety benchmarks. Tesla stock jumped more than 7% on that announcement.

The Cybercab — Tesla’s purpose-built autonomous vehicle — is still expected to come to market this year. How management frames its production ramp on the call will matter.

Analyst sentiment across 30 ratings sits at 13 buys, 11 holds, and 6 sells. The consensus is hold, with sell-side skepticism higher than typical for a large-cap stock.

On valuation, Tesla trades at roughly 364x trailing earnings — about 35x Mercedes and 52x Volkswagen. That premium is built on the physical AI thesis, not the auto business.

Tesla broke out of a multi-month descending channel last week, trading around $395-$400. The 100-day moving average remains bearish at -13.21%, meaning the broader trend hasn’t turned yet.

The April 22 call is the next real test of whether management can attach timelines and financials to what has mostly been a vision story.

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