Top analyst revisits Tesla stock price target as Q1 earnings loom
Tesla shares have lost around $170 billion in value over the past week.
Tesla shares nudged higher in early Tuesday trading, and look set to arrest a post tariff-reaction slide that has loped more than $170 billion from its market value, as a top Wall Street analyst pitched another bull case for the beleaguered EV maker.
Tesla (TSLA) shares have whipsawed over the past month, surging more than 28% over a seven-day stretch in late-March, tied to comments from CEO Elon Musk during a town hall event broadcast on X, before falling around 19% into yesterday's close as investors counted the cost of China tariffs on the EV maker's global export business.
The group's weaker-than-expected first quarter deliveries, which fell 13% from last year and slumped 32% from the three months ending in December, were also seen a harbinger of the Tesla brand damage tied to Musk's political activities and his role as President Donald Trump's federal government cost-cutting adviser.
Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas, in fact, said no other name in his coverage list "is more closely tied to these volatile trade and political debates."
The analyst, however, a longtime Tesla bull who reiterated his $410 price target and 'overweight' rating on Tesla stock in a note published Tuesday, said Musk's focus on robotics, autonomous driving and energy storage are likely to drive longer-term value for the beaten-down stock. TheStreet/Getty/Shutterstock
Jonas argued that Tesla's capabilities in “key areas of physical AI including data, robotics, energy storage, compute and manufacturing .... offer growth and margin opportunities that greatly exceed those of the traditional EV business which is under pressure.”
Those abilities, Jonas said, will more than offset near-term concerns tied to tariff risks.
'Embodied AI' may be big Tesla boost
"Regardless of the near-term policy path, we believe the march of 'embodied AI' will see a proliferation of machines ... the ability to 'produce' labor in a factory as machines make machines with minimal human intervention ... may alter historical measurements such as dependency ratios, retirement age and GDP per capita," Jonas said.
All that said, Tesla shares are still down nearly 40% for the year, has shed more than $660 billion in value since their mid-December peak, with a key first quarter earnings report slated for April 22.
Analysts looking for a bottom-line profit of 45 cents a share on revenue of around $22.38 billion.
Related: Tesla Q1 deliveries tumble as Elon Musk's political role hammers sales
Profit margins have narrowed by a third over the past three years, the group reported its first-ever sales decline on record in 2024, and promises from Musk about cybercabs, robots and autonomous software updates have yet to materialize.
And absent a rally tied to President Donald Trump's election last November, fueled in part by the nearly $300 million in donations from Musk himself, the stock is basically trading at levels last seen in August of 2021.
Brand destruction is real
The Tesla brand, meanwhile, is also under siege. Once seen as the poster-children for green-energy automation, Musk's cars are now under attack, literally and figuratively, by protesters worldwide.
European sales are in free fall, competitors in China are leaving it behind, and the "Takedown Tesla" movement is tarnishing its image by the day.
Jonas, however, is looking further into the future.
Related: Elon Musk rides to Tesla's defense
"We believe the rise of Embodied AI—machines equipped with sophisticated robotics and agentic software that can operate in 3D physical space—will be transformative," he said. "Tesla is at the forefront of this movement. Over the next one to two decades, the proliferation of humanoid robots could fundamentally reshape the concept of production itself."
Tesla shares were marked 3.6% higher in premarket trading to indicate an opening bell price of $241.63 each.
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