Tesla trades at $378.15, a 391.3x price-to-earnings ratio that sits far above its slowing revenue and shrinking margins. Robotaxi and Optimus give bulls a growth story, but a fair-value model puts shares 34.3% below today's price, with the next earnings print due Oct. 21, 2026.
Tesla Inc (TSLA) trades at $378.15, up 2.04% as of Oct. 5. That gives the automaker a $1.46 trillion market cap. Its trailing price-to-earnings ratio sits at 391.3x. Its forward P/E stands at 239.0x and its EV/EBITDA at 136.0x, multiples that price in growth the company has not yet delivered. The stock's one-year return stands at -13.8%.
Revenue and Margins Keep Slipping
Revenue peaked near $97.7 billion in 2024 and fell to $94.83 billion in 2025, while gross margin has held near 18% since 2023, down from 25.6% in 2022. Over the same stretch, EPS fell from $4.07 in FY2022 to $1.66 in FY2025.
Consensus still expects a turnaround, though. Analysts forecast EPS of $1.70 for FY2026, $2.30 for FY2027 and $3.21 for FY2028 — and even that FY2028 figure implies roughly 118x earnings at today's price.
Catalysts Are Real, but Early
Robotaxi is the nearest-term catalyst: Tesla reported 380,000 unsupervised miles across six cities as of Jul. 23, 2026, with miles growing about 10% week over week. Optimus remains further out — Tesla management described production as a "flat S-curve initially", and analysts at Citizens described the timeline as too optimistic for the current valuation.
Tesla also guides to more than $25 billion of 2026 capital spending and up to $30 billion in debt facilities, against levered free cash flow of about $7.0 billion. SpaceX merger speculation adds a governance wildcard, though it traces to one analyst's 90% odds estimate rather than company confirmation.
The Last Earnings Miss Still Stings
Tesla's Q2 report on Jul. 22, 2026, showed EPS of $0.33 against a $0.49 estimate, a 32.65% miss, even as revenue of $28.24 billion beat the $25.55 billion consensus. The stock fell 15.63% that day, and the next report is tentatively set for Oct. 21, 2026, with consensus EPS at $0.45.
Valuation Models Point Lower
A fair-value model puts Tesla shares at $248.60, or 34.3% below the current price. Analyst price targets imply only 6.7% upside as of Jun. 30, 2026, with a Hold consensus near $404 reported in June. One bear case from May argues that if autonomy efforts fail, Tesla's valuation could compress toward that of a mature automaker — a stress scenario, not a forecast.
The stock already prices in a lot of success, and Oct. 21 is the next checkpoint for margins and capital spending.
Source: Investing.com
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